For Christmas last year (1999) my mother gave me a copy of a diary her aunt Adelaide, my great-aunt, had found. It belonged to my grandfather, and was written between the months of January and December 1931. He was a young man, then, unmarried, with his whole life ahead of him. It has a special poignancy for my mother, as she was the first daughter of his second marriage, to an Irish nurse. Ah, why don't I just let her explain it in her own words (from the cover page to the folder she gave me):

An Introduction:

There are defining moments in history and in the life of each of us. Aunt Addie found this a while ago and gave it to me. I found the negatives for these photos in some stuff that came from Grammie Lizzie's house on the Point and had them developed just out of curiousity. It appears that they were taken at the same time the diary was being written.

The diary covers the period during which Sidney Look decided that he would not be a teacher in Wesley, Maine, but would attend the University of Maine and become an engineer. This led him to ROTC, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Army Reserves, Beth Gifford, Northern Ireland and Lily (Betty) Maxwell. If he had made a different decision, we would all be... well, we wouldn't be, and that is the point.

I've made copies of this for Peggy, Susan, Steve & Ken, in the hopes that some of it will survive and that you will enjoy portions of it.

Merry Christmas 1999

Love,

Mom

At any rate, Sidney Look was my grandfather, a man who died before I really came to know him, and who suffered a series of silencing strokes before that. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French government as a result of his work with the French Resistance, and a Bronze Star by the American government for similar feats. He worked for "the phone company", back when everyone knew what you meant by that, put in his own lines down to Look's Point, the family land in Jonesboro that has been owned by the family since the early part of the nineteenth century, built a house ("the camp") to retire to when his working days were done, and smoked a pipe. By all accounts, he was soft-spoken and hard working and smart, and I wonder how I'd have turned out if I'd had a chance to know him better.

Beth Gifford was Sidney's first wife, and Betty Maxwell his second, the nurse from Fintona, Co. Tyrone, Ireland, who he met while fighting the Nazis. They were married and had my mother in 1944, while in England. Peggy and Susan are my aunts, and Ken is my brother. Betty passed away last spring, after a long stay in the same nursing home that saw my grandfather's last days. I never really knew her, either, though my brother says she had a good sense of humor and lots of stories to tell.

As it is now the first year of the next millenium (no matter what those reactionaries would have had you believe last year) and seventy years since Sidney started his diary, I thought it might be interesting to compare and contrast his entries with mine, day by day. If nothing else, it gives me a sort of morning devotional and a chance to reflect on a quieter time, before the madness of the Second World War, the atom bomb, and so forth.

I'm not sure of all the references, and neither is my mother, so bear with the use of obscure initials, place names, and so forth—I will do my best to provide a glossary, map, and so forth, as time goes on, with links and popup tips adding detail, but for now the entries are few and the need somewhat lessened. Suffice it to say that Jonesboro is on the coast of Maine, "down east" as they say, and the rest may become clear with time, or it may not.

So, without further ado, here is the frontispiece from the diary. The picture below came later, after he'd done all of these things, taken and lost a wife, had a son, married again, and possibly even fathered my mother. Nobody knows when the picture was taken, just that it was in Germany. Enjoy.