Editor’s note: This is the last of a series about growing up in Marysville during the late 1930s and the 1940s written by Bill Boyd. Each article has been a snapshot of the people, businesses and activities during that era as seen through the eyes of a young boy.
Boyd was born in Marysville in 1932, graduated from Marysville High School in 1950, and lived the greater part of his life here.
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One last word
I have been writing these columns about growing up in Marysville for about two years now, and it has been a lot of fun. The columns started almost by accident. I had been working on a new way to write on my computer, because I had lost quite a bit of my eyesight, and I could no longer write in the conventional way. It was kind of a Rube Goldberg experiment, but fortunately it worked.
To practice my new writing technique, I wrote a couple of short pieces about what it was like to live in Marysville when I was a young boy. My computer read them aloud to me, and they weren’t too bad. So I continued practicing by writing a couple more. The more I wrote, the more comfortable I became with my new writing method.
I knew that the Marysville Journal-Tribune sometimes ran historical material, so I sent a couple of columns to Dan Behrens, the newspaper’s editor. Dan liked the pieces, and I told him he could run them if he wanted. He said he would run them as a column.
I figured I might be able to come up with eight or 10 columns. Then I found that the more I wrote, the more I could remember. I ended up with 98 articles.
Readers sometimes sent me notes that reminded me of other things to write about. I know none of us can relive our formative years, but I found that writing about those years comes pretty darn close. So many times I broke out laughing while I was writing. And a couple times I found a tear in my eyes.
These words, however, are the last of the series. Quite a few readers suggested that I put these stories into a book. I was skeptical at first, until it was pointed out to me that it is the group of columns as a whole which explains what the town was like and what it was like to grow up in Marysville during the 1930s and ‘40s. That made sense. Then Bob Parrott, president of the Union County Historical Society, encouraged me to put them into the form of a book, so I gave it serious consideration.
Accordingly, I have been working on a book for quite some time. It is entitled, “It Isn’t Easy For a Mermaid to Dance”. The book includes all of the columns that have appeared in the Journal-Tribune, along with others that were written just for the book … 130 tales in all. It is now available as an e-book on Amazon.com, for use on Kindle, iPad and other book readers.
I would like to thank everyone who sent me letters and emails with words of encouragement. I heard from people all over the country … from old classmates and from relatives of people mentioned in the columns. I heard from people I went to school with and from people I have never met. I even heard from one lady who turned out to be a distant relative of mine. I never met her, but someone apparently mailed her one of the columns that mentioned her grandmother. That was really nice.
This whole project has been fun, and I hope you enjoy the e-book.
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(Those wishing to contact Bill Boyd can email him at bill@davidwboyd.com)