I have a job at a book distributer, Once Sold Tales, where my main job is going through the used books that they get, listing the good ones and chucking the bad ones. As a perk, I get to keep any books that don't list, though normally I don't want them either. But yesterday, I found a cool one.
Growth in Using English: Developing Language Power is a book published in 1944, intended to be used to teach junior and senior high school students their English. The cool part is the vandelism. It has all the highly entertaining scribbles of it's many past students gracing the margins and first few blank pages. Here are a few of them taken from the first page:
IN CASE OF A FIRE THROW HIS BOOK IN TO KEEP IT LIT
(picture of a car)
Leaping Lena
Leap in
Limp out
Let no one unaquinted* with English enter here.
There's also an unflattering headshot of a man with a fairly large nose, with "Nose Cooper" beside it, and, under that, "AINT IT THE TRUTH". My guess is that Nose Cooper is their nickname for the teacher, especially since the opposite page has another, much better drawn, picture of a guy with a similarly sized nose, wearing a snappy suit complete with flower in his button hole. He's also labeled as Nose Cooper, though another label calls him the "Ford Trade Boy".
My favorite doodle is the one that says, "Turn to page 244". Page 244 has another note telling to turn to page 98, where another message sends it's reader to page 408. It finally ends on page 138, with big block letters saying. "NOSEY".
The doodles continue throughout the book, with comments on every illustration. One of them labels two men and their dog "Tom Donahue", "Ron Cooper", and "Louie", respectively. This would probably be funnier if I knew who Louie was. Given that the man named Ron Cooper was given patched clothes and beard stubble, he's probably once again the teacher.
I really like the character that doodles give a book, and kinda miss Tom Donahue and Louie, even if I never knew them.
*Yeah, that's right, it's spelled wrong. Ironic.
