Unless you were born before 1863, Saginaw’s Hoyt Library contains at least one newspaper from the precise date that you entered the world.
No, not a newsprint copy. Microfilm.
The New York Times, back to 1863. The Saginaw Daily Enterprise, 1869 and forward.
A one-month spool is about the side of a donut. They are jam-packed in drawers behind the information desk, where devoted and friendly staffers will help you get set up on one of the reading machines.
Hoyt, Butman-Fish, Zauel, Wickes and Claytor in the Saginaw system — along with libraries elsewhere — offer numerous programs and services that are worth exploring so that we may in time select our favorites.
My own fave is the Hoyt-only old and historic newspapers. Microfilm is not high tech, with operation fundamentals that basically have been the same through the years, but microfilm might as well be New Age. For example, to look back at a Saginaw News and see an exact version from October 24, 1955, is quite remarkable.
How to get started
Why pick 10/24/55? Well, this so happens to be my personal date of birth, and my first suggestion for enjoyment and enrichment is to get started where it all began.
You’ll be drawn not only to the news stories but to the advertisements, which made newspapers highly profitable during the halcyon days.
On the same date that I was butt-naked hollering in the arms of Lillian Pettet Thompson, with Wally Thompson supportive at her bedside, here’s what was recorded on the pages of that 26-page, seven-cent Monday edition:
- General Motors’ worldwide employment had reached a peak of 631,958.
- Wickes Corp. had recalled 175 local workers.
- Even while the economy seemed to be humming, an editorial opined, “There is a need for the clergy to become better acquainted with the vocational needs of their flocks.”
- An editorial cartoon lamented “rising newsprint costs,” with a pair of executives slipping and sliding atop a humongous roll.
- A drunken pedestrian was injured when struck by a car on Johnson near North Washington, while a block away 2,200 folks packed the Saginaw Auditorium for a Boston Symphony Orchestra fall concert.
- A pair of drive-in theaters, the Bel-Air on Janes Road and the Twilite on State Street, were getting ready to close for the season.
- Catholic high schools played football on Sundays and results were reported the following Monday, along with the fifth loss in a row for the Detroit Lions.
- The A & P at East Genesee and Cherry, one of more than a dozen local markets, advertised Eight O’Clock Coffee for 59 cents a pound and ground beef for 25 cents, along with Halloween “five-cent” candy bars at two dozen for 89 cents. A can of peas was a dime as was a loaf of bread.
Old times in perspective
Keep in mind that a dime back then was equivalent to a dollar nowadays. That’s why an “automatic electric” clothes dryer from the downtown Gately’s shop, at $229.95, actually was far more costly during the Eisenhower years. But have no fear, payment plans started at $2.50 per week.
This was 1955, of course. News specifically from the Black and Latino communities was virtually nonexistent, and the clothing store display-ad sketches of men and women models were entirely Caucasian. A lone sign of ethnic equality on 10/24/55 was that the obituary for Nelson Porterfield, 67, of Bethel AME Church, residence on 11th Street near Lapeer, was posted first at the top of the page, not at the bottom.
My reason for sharing all this is to inform readers who still may not be aware that all this history is available at Hoyt Library. I may not have known if I had been in a profession other than news reporting.
While performing research, it was easy to get caught up scrolling entire newspapers, beyond pinpointing the needed factoid and getting back to work. Nowadays, in semi-retirement, exploring may occupy an entire afternoon. This is true especially on hot summer days, with Hoyt now comfortably air conditioned.
We may begin with our birthdays but then pick historic events. Maybe Brown v. Board of Ed on May 17. 1954, or the Kennedy assassination on Nov. 22, 1963. What did The Saginaw News (or The New York Times) have to say? Options are endless.
And so I encourage anyone and everyone to check out the microfilm archives at Hoyt Library. Try it, you might like it.
