WWII Clamdigger -
September 1944

The Clamdigger

... got quite a pat on the back the other day and the staff hasn’t quite recovered from the shock. We has been under the impression that our paper was known in Rowayton, in training centers, on the seas, and in many foreign lands, but we had no idea that it meant anything at all to the civilian life outside of the town. A request came through the other day for a complete file of issues be forwarded to the Department of War Records of the State Library in Hartford. Some day some student of our time may poor over these issues and use some of the material for a learned dissertation for a Ph.D. degree in history.

September 1944

Greetings from the Library

If ever you let your thoughts wander back to the library be sure to include the windows boxes in your mental picture. In spite of the brown lawns and parched dirt the geraniums in our window boxes have put on an exceptionally good show this year, indeed they’ve been the topic of many favorable comments.

When you come back and pay a visit to the library, (I hope), don’t think you are locked out if you can’t push the door open, – it now opens out, that is change number one. After you get inside you’ll find a little longer passage. The magazine rack is now on that side. When you get where you can see the desk there you will find the next change. Don’t be startled though, yon gray head isn’t Dot Johnson grown old in your absence, it is Mrs. Norwood, who took over when Dot accepted her new position with Ferguson Library in Stamford.

Downstairs our business is still in books, but upstairs on Mondays and Tuesdays the ladies are either busy sewing, or making dressings for the Red Cross. On those days the Red Cross flag flutters from the centre of the bay window, the red of our geraniums makes a nice complement to the red cross.

Just before Dot went to Stamford, she inaugurated the Newark System of charging books. In simple language that means everyone has a personal library card which is used for stamping the date when you take out or return a book. When you have no books out, I file the card for you so that you don’t have a frantic search if you suddenly get a yen for a book and you haven’t used your card lately.

We have a number of books about this war but I think it would be a grand idea if when you all are home again, each one of our Rowayton boys would write or tell some of his experiences, perhaps we could get a book, or at least a pamphlet, from the combined experiences, something to hand down – a written record of Rowayton’s contribution to World War II.

Let’s hope we’ll soon be hearing some of those eye-witness accounts right here in Rowayton.

Mrs. Norwood
September 1944

When this was written the library was located across the street from the hardware store in what is now the Art Center. [Ed.]