A sample of what I'm working on these days -

I've mentioned that I'm scanning old photos and documents for the Cabot Historical Society, and I came across this photo today in the process. I thought you might be interested to see a "before" and "after" example of the process. This picture is much more recent than most that I'm working with, but it is secured in the album with scotch tape as well as (probably) glued in place. The glue will usually dry out and sometimes a photo can be lifted without damaging the original, but I'm going to leave everything in place in this album, donated by the Hubert Wheeler family this fall. Once I have cleaned up the scanned image as much as I can, I will make a copy for the display albums I'm putting together. These are specially designed to hold photos for the public to view without damage from fingerprints, wear, etc. Eventually, everything I've scanned onto my computer will be on CDs, as well as in the albums. The originals will be left in the album and the album will be repaired and stored in a special archival box, away from light and the public.

The first photo is just as I scanned it to my computer. The second is how it looks after I've cleaned it up, ready to be printed or displayed on a CD.

This is the road crew back in about 1956. The roads were kept in the summer with a "road machine" much like the modern one we have now, and it had two big upright wheels that the blade operator was constantly adjusting and there might have been more than one man on the grader. It was pulled by a tractor. There were usually two or more men following it, along with a dump truck and driver. The men would pick up sod and stones turned up by the grader and toss them into the truck. As I recall, they would rake the sod into piles or rows to be picked up. There was also a crew to clear the ditches - mostly with hand tools. If gravel was needed, it was dumped and then leveled roughly with the road machine and smoothed, stones picked, etc. by men following behind. I found a picture of one of those old machines so you can see what I mean. I know some of you will remember them, too. Of course, in the winter it was an entirely different story when the roads were plowed with a slow-moving crawler tractor - one man in the cab and two tending the wings on the back. They had to plow all night during storms - the thing only traveled perhaps 10 or 12 miles an hour, and there were lots of miles to cover.