16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Thursday, August 3, 1911: Just got home from a party a little while ago. It was up at Amelia Seibert’s. I had a real nice time. As I thought, B.G. was there.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Whew, to be young and at a party with a special guy. I bet Grandma spent hours getting ready for the party. Did she wear a special dress? How did she fix her hair?
She may have fixed her hair like this. (Photos from article titled “How Women Can Style Their Hair,” Ladies Home Journal, June 1911)
I can almost sense her excitement, her nervousness, and her fluttering heart. She may have been thinking—Does he think I look pretty? Will he talk to me? . . .
Or like this . . .
The diary entries for the past week have referred to a guy Grandma really liked. On July 29 she wrote, “He was there. B.” And the next day she wrote, “ Saw him today.” And now the diary entry provides another clue: the last initial, “G.”
I keep trying not to speculate who B.G. was. Grandma obviously made an effort to semi-disguise his name by using initials—and yet I somehow can’t help myself. I’m probably totally out in left field but the only B.G. that I can come up with is her sister Ruth’s future husband—Bill Gauger.
Is it possible that Grandma may have liked Bill before he became Ruth’s beau? William (Bill) Gauger lived on a farm near McEwensville and was born in 1894—so he would have been 17 in 1911. Grandma was 16. Ruth was 19. It almost seems like Bill would have still seemed like a young kid to Ruth in 1911. (And, according to the diary, in 1911 Ruth was dating Jim Oakes).
Or like this.
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With the coming of summer one turns instinctively to the flowers, and there is an overwhelming desire to have them around us, in our gardens, and even on our persons. The desire to be personally adorned with them can find best expression in the use of the artificial. In these hats are shown what lovely artificial flowers can be had and at small cost.
