It happened before my time
I like history. Not the seventeen kings of a foreign land kind, but the stuff that is based on me, the places I’ve been and the people I’ve met. Goes well with genealogy. Goes well with old maps, and pictures and the other little bits of stuff we accumulate over time. The more time you spend accumulating, the more fun it is. Long life and history! There, if you are in need of a good toast, you can borrow it.
Last evening, I was posed (in the virtual sense that the Internet allows) a question about what the history of a particular place might be. Say, for example, a barn. Well, not just any barn, but one of the three entertaining barns of my late adolescence. There was Scotchfort, and Stratford, and there was the Barn at UPEI. Someone wondered how it all began, and I had pictures.
Now, it happened before my time, but it seems just like yesterday. There was this big old cowbarn, three stories high, crying out for a new role on a changing campus, and the student union of the day decided that if one could party in a barn, they would have a barn for the party. Or something along those lines. One of those yearbooks I keep in the basement for just such a question gave up the renovation photos, the official opening day, even a picture of the first band to officially perform. The scanner did the transfer to a more transferable data medium.
Now, I don’t have all the details. The band was one I had heard of, but I am not sure if I ever actually saw them live. Using the Want To Be A Millionaire (I do, actually), I took one of my lifelines, and “called a friend”. The call took more than thirty seconds, due to some Skype issues, and there was no Regis or Meredith to keep me on task. I did discover three of the names, and was told to use another lifeline, sending off an email to the man on the Island that serves as an encyclopedia of band history.
We’re in a long weekend, so he probably doesn’t check his email every thirty seconds like some people I know, but as soon as I have the identity of the fourth person, I will be passing the information along. To a group of younger people. Who don’t even know they’ve asked a question. Therein lies the inspiration; if you can answer it before the question is even asked, you pick up points in trivia.
