[TEXAS] [SCRAP BOOK] Three Oversized Scrapbooks Amarillo, Texas during World War II

Amarillo, Texas & University Park, Texas, 1944-1950. 2 scrapbooks 37 x 31 cm. & 1 scrapbook 32 x 26 cm. As a teenager in the bustling city of Amarillo, Texas, Betty Ruth Floeck (1928-2009) seemed to live a life that was something out of the movies. Her social life would make a teenager from this day and age head spin. Whether she was attending a "social" or going on a hay ride, Betty Ruth made sure she saved every scrap of paper, piece of hay, or corsage that was associated with the event. All the scrapbooks put together brings to mind a sort of mash up of the movies Spender in the Grass, American Graffiti, and Friday Night Lights. The first scrapbook opens with a full page article about downtown Amarillo featuring the "Polk Street Drag", referring to the street where young people coming home from the armed services go to see anyone and everyone. Ruth was a member of the Deb-Ette's, a sort of junior sorority - she includes a couple of copies of their "Constitution". Items pasted in include: invitations, score cards, napkins with specific places and events attached to it, newspaper articles with names underlined and comments written at the side as well as a full page from August 15th 1945 from the Amarillo Daily News stating PEACE!, hay from hay rides, photos, essays, ribbons, and many corsages. Ruth's brother, Clifford Floeck, Jr. was a lieutenant in the Air Corps at the time and laid in is a leather pamphlet showing his service. After graduating high school, Ruth went on to attend Southern Methodist University as an art major. A datebook laid in reveals her dating schedule which was prodigious, with dates written in one day after another. A receipt from the University is laid in showing the cost of school per year was around $1000. The additions to the scrapbooks decrease as she is attending University, but laid in are clues to her life after school. Betty Ruth was married by 1949 and had her first baby in 1950. She and her husband, Jack Anderson, settled back in Amarillo and had two children - living the rest their lives in her hometown. Most pages are disbound but the quantity of material is hard to describe. The amount of material stored in these scrapbooks is outrageous (in a good way). A true look back at a young woman during the height of an era in America that has long been forgotten. (Inventory #: 4219)