Short Made Long

O but Ginny and I had such great fun Friday!

At least one of us did.

You see I’ve decided to transcribe and publish that 1854 diary by William L. Short that I found last week. So I set up templates and formatting. Then I recruited Ginny to type the text as I deciphered it and read it to her. How exciting!

What fun!

Trouble is, over the last 155 years the tiny pages got wet. In places ink blotches obliterate the text. In other places exposure to sunlight fades the ink. And even when the writing is visible, the ancient Spenserian script with colloquial abbreviations…

Have no fear, John Cowart is on the track of diary writer, William L. Short… Ginny observes my obsession with this project and laughs at my glee. I feel like the cartoon bloodhound, Officer McGruff, a figure which the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office used to use to teach school children about safety and crime prevention. The trench-coat wearing hound tracked clues with a magnifying glass like Sherlock Holmes. He always got his man.

Ginny observed as I checked the Library Of Congress Prints & Photographs Division for possible pictures to illustrate the diary. She watched as I groaned my way through the Illinois State Archives till I discovered Short’s marriage license. And, I may have uncovered his burial place and I’m hot on the track of his Civil War records…

Say, could the diary have ended up here in Jacksonville, Florida, because he was one of the damnyankee invaders who overran my hometown during the war? I’m looking into that possibility.

Ginny said I show more enthusiasm about transcribing Short’s Diary than I’ve shown for any project in months.

Anyhow, as Ginny and I played History Detective, my search for clues may have gotten a little out of hand. And she may have gotten a tiny bit exasperated with my obsession.

She doesn’t love fun as much as I do.

Here’s the process I followed after she gave up being amanuensis on my quest and sulked in her rocking chair for a while then went into the bathroom …

First, when I scan one of the little book’s 3 by 4 ¾ -inch pages, say the section for February 21 to 25, 1854, it looks like this:

I scan each page three times—in color, in black & white, and in gray scale. By enlarging the scanned page 200 times, and by adjusting contrast, brightness and mid-tones while zooming in and out on a single word, and by comparing the three versions, I come up with something like this:

With a bit of guess work I can decipher much of that text….

But, what’s this?

I see a clue!

Look carefully to the left of that red line between February 22nd and February 23^rd—Do you see it?

Yes, William L. Short got ink on his fingers that day—that’s his thumbprint on the page!

Wow!

Isn’t that exciting!

Wow!

Those wimps on CSI-Miami can eat their hearts out with envy; I retain my title as King Of The Geriatric Geeks!.

When I saw the fingerprint, gleefully I ran and got Ginny out of the bathroom. I pulled her into the living room to show her the enlarged thumbprint on the computer screen.

“You drug me out here for THIS!”

Well, my project is not exactly like piecing together the text of the Dead Sea Scrolls but I find it exhilarating.

Other women get to marry men who only drink and chase bar girls, Poor Ginny had to marry one who obsesses over old diaries!

But she only acts exasperated.

From the way she looks at me, kisses me, and hugs me, I think that even after 40 years of marriage, I still amuse her.

I’m so thankful that God put me into her life; and that He let this little diary fall into my hands.