Former Granton Resident Releases Second Volume of Book Series on Granton's History
Thursday, October 29th, 2020 -- 1:32 PM
-Jay Parker, a former Granton resident, has written a second volume of a book about the history of Granton.I spoke with Jay and he talked about what this book is about specifically:
Jay: “This new book is called Looking Back: A Pictorial History of Granton, Wisconsin. And it’s a book that consists almost completely of pictures and captions and I think the best way to explain it is to compare it to the last book that I did. When I was working on that first book, there was no plan to do any other as a follow up. And the goal at that time was just to make known some of the history that hadn’t been covered in a previous book that was done in 1976 as part of a bicentennial celebration. Of course, 35 or more years had passed since that book had been printed, so there were more years of things that had happened that could be documented.”
“So, in that first book, I told a narrative, starting in 1845, and worked up to the year of publication which was 2016. And I included as many photos and other interesting documents as I could fit into it because, at the time, I thought it would be the only book. But this new book is different because it conveys the history of Granton through a format of just pictures and captions without having any kind of a narrative trying to tie them all together.”
Question: “So, when you decided to put this second book together, was it because of all the information you found in doing the first book?"
Jay: “Partly. I had tried doing a narrative in the first book to cover as much as I possibly could within the confines in what you can do in a particularly sized volume. And, as I said, originally there were no plans for a second book. And there were photos that I wanted to include in the first book, which might be a building or merchant or maybe an event that had happened, but I couldn’t locate a photo of those sorts of things by the time it was necessary to send the book into the printer. And, of course, after that book was published, up-turned some of the photos I was looking for. So, I acquired them and just set them aside because I didn’t have any particular plans for them at that time.”
“But, in the meantime, more people had gotten the word that I was looking for vintage/antique aged photos and they would start sending them to me. And, in addition to that, I had photos that I had earlier, but hadn’t been able to put them in the first book because of the space consideration. So, now I have this poll that’s generating more and more photos and I eventually decided that a second book was needed, so I could take these photos and they could be preserved together in one place for posterity. So, I kind of restarted my search for more photos including ones that I had failed to find previously and I was successful in doing that. And I just thought it was relevant that they should be published and saved for the future.”
Question: “Was this second book easier to put together compared to the first?”
Jay: “Well, writing captions is sort of like trying to write a tiny story about each picture and you have to convey a lot of information in a very limited amount of words. For some photos, that can be very easy and, for others, you have to pick your words carefully so you can convey what you need to convey without being misunderstood. For example, this new book contains a whole chapter on street views, where I take pictures of the same street from different time periods and put them next to each other and I tell the reader as much as I can about the buildings and businesses that are represented in each of those photos and what’s changing from one photo to the next. And trying to pack all that information into several sentences can, sometimes, be a bit daunting because I have two sets of readers. I’ve got readers who are alive today who are maybe familiar with some of what I’m saying, but there’s also going to be readers in the future who are going to be dependent on what is in that caption to provide them with, possibly, all that they’ll ever know about that photo. So, I wouldn’t say it was easier, it was just a different process.”
Question: “You hadn’t intended on writing a second volume, but we got one. Will we see a third too?”
Jay: “Yes there will be and it’s already in the works. And, again, this one is taking a completely different perspective. Going back to that first book I wrote, I had intended to include a chapter where there was just depicting a lot of different advertisements that I had found from different merchants. And I had particularly chosen ones that had a lot of interesting graphics and things that were for sale and price listings and really flower listing of products and things like that. But because that wasn’t really the focus of the first book, and I was running out of time before I had to go to the printer, I ended up only including just a couple of pages along those lines.”
“And so in the couple years I’ve had since then, doing more research for the second book, I’ve added another 1,600 advertisements to my collection. And I decided that a book depicting an ad from every business that ever excited in Granton or in the Mapleworks community that preceded Granton, could easily be a book by itself. So, I hope to have that book completed by the end of next year and, with the publication of that book, there will be a chronological narrative history, a photographic history, which is what this new book is about, and this future book, basically, showing the history of Granton through the medium of advertising. So, those three, combined with that book from 1976 that I had mentioned, will provide people in the future with a very good record of the village’s history.”
Question: “If people are interested in this new book or your first book or would like to learn more about you, where can they go to do that?”
Jay: “The new book can be purchased at three locations in Granton, the Mapleworks Cafe, the Granton Hardware Store and the Granton Municipal Office. And the book is 244 pages, it has over 600 Granton related photos and the cost is $40. And if people have questions for me, they can email me at [email protected]. Or I do have a fairly simple website where they can read a little more about it and you can order it that way. The website is gwprojects.wixsite.com/granton-looking-back. And like I said, that will take you to a simple website and you can get some more information and order the book if people are interested in doing that.”
Question: “Anything else?”
Jay: “I’m just thrilled that it has finally come to fruition and, like I said, now I’m turning my head to working on this third one, which is well along. The collection of material is pretty much done, but it’s going to be another year of selecting what to use and trying to do all those businesses justice by including something for each of them if it’s possible.”
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