[See Audra's post for video]
Well, my first thought was, as I began traipsing the miles of tall, dim, heaped and variously deployed chambers that make up DataChambers conglomeration of spaces, “What a great place for the climactic shoot out in a seedy thriller.” Lots of places to hide; lots of twists and turns; strange spaces.
Our little video is certainly not a thriller, but the visit did confer an up beat mood among us. A chief source of our rising spirits was the realization that dozens and dozens — perhaps as many as 200 — of boxes contained multiple copies of Howlers. Soon these will all be digitized, leaving us only with the problem of finding a respectful method of divesting ourselves of the boxed duplicates. Space found can feel like “Paradise Found.”
The lion’s share of our boxes contained the personal and working papers of Kyle Hayes, a Wilkes County attorney who lost the 1956 Republican gubernatorial nomination. Maybe our excellent reference staff can help me figure out why Kyle merits so many linear feet in our storage facility (I have not found much ). At the very least, we can certainly shred some of the many files of debt collection suits that seem to have been the bread and butter of his law practice.
We also found several dozen boxes of sports films, entire games, mostly football, going back to the late 1940s or early 1950s (e.g. 1956 Wake vs Duke). These are deteriorating quickly. If anyone knows sports fans, historians, or marketing folks that might have a burning interest in paying for the digital rescue of these films, I’d appreciate knowing.
In shor,t there were no really ugly surprises or complex mysteries, amid our storage stash, and some reason to hope that we can reduce its volume in the near future.
Afterwards we went to Estrellas on Silas Creek and everyone ate fish tacos with relish.
