By Lynford “Bud” Scott. If you read a book and enjoy it, one of the best things you can then do is pass it on for someone else to enjoy. That is why we have a bookcase of used or special sale books at the Historical Society bookstore. Certainly one of the most enjoyable is Looking Back at 90 Years: Recollections of an Oldtimer.

      This book assembles original recounting as well as reprints from his articles in various publications, and columns by fellow "oldtimer" Andrew Genzoli. Together they present iconic events and personal accounts from nearly a century of Humboldt's past.

       At the beginning, we glimpse Scott's earliest years as a child in Placer County with his father blacksmithing, working with the gold mines and hunting bears and deer in the wooded mountains. Then came the family's 1910 move to Humboldt by train and then ship where they marveled at their first view of the vast ocean.  

       The book is then filled with stories and photographs giving us memorable views of the making of today's Humboldt. We deal with trains, rail construction, early glimpses of aviation, river commerce and picnics with agate hunting on the beaches. Included too are school attendance and sports achievements, as well as the pleasures of early movies and the local movie theaters, plus adventures in automobiles, and hunting, hiking and fishing excursions.

       Along with glimpses of daily life, we get first-hand views of several historic events. The Scott family were among the many onlookers on Samoa beach when submarine H3 grounded in 1915, and the wreck of USS Milwaukee in its attempt to rescue the sub. The family was also witness to another historic event: Driving of the Golden Spike in 1914. Fifty years later, Bud attended the anniversary of that event, while the next year he and the original golden spike plus the celebration of the rebuilding of the NWP railroad that had been whipped out by the 1964 historic flood. 

       This is just the sort of book that the Historical Society is happy to make available at its bookstore -- a book that captures memories which become history.  And this is also a project you can be part of by donating local history books for resale at the Barnum House -- thus making memories and history even more enduring.