I’ve been helping Jackie with getting her blog posts up. Here’s a new one from her about newspaper research:

—

I’ve been working on getting the volumes of my Round Barn saga ready for printing, and since these are all based on truth, some take research. The research is often fun— one of my best stories came this way.I found, in the farm papers, a pageant on the history of dairying in Rock County —was it or wasn’t it written by my grandfather? It seemed to have been performed at a 4-H fair some time in the thirties. I went to the Beloit library —nothing digital yet— and went through the films of back newspapers till I found news of the fair, in 1937, and yes, grampa had written the pageant.There was a lot in the paper about the fair, including that someone I knew was the Queen of Turtle Township. I’ve known her over the years, so I called her up. She was probably in her late seventies.
“Jean,” I said, I’ve been reading about you in the paper.”
“What have I done?” she exclaimed.
“Well, back in 1937 at the 4-H fair you were queen—“
She laughed, and then I told her the paper also told who was the Healthiest Girl in Rock County: it wasn’t her.
“I can tell you why THAT happened,” she said…

I’ve written up what kept her from that honor in Volume 3. I won’t give give away the joke here!