I found a time machine!

We found a long parking spot!

We had stopped in the town of Woodstock, Vermont to look at the covered wooden bridge and just generally wander about looking... being a tourist.

The Woodstock VT covered bridge

The first thing I noticed was the date on the covered wooden bridge, that was the the month & year of the music festival in Woodstock, New York!

The bridge sign, hmmm. Woodstock 1969?

Just across the road was the town library, I like to visit the different libraries, they tell a lot about an area.  This library had what looked like a permanent used book sale area before you went into the library proper, so I took a look around. 

I don't have a lot of room for real books, I do most of my reading on a Kindle these days.  But I cannot just walk past a book sale without looking...

[On a personal note I'm always saddened to see a library getting rid of books, I understand the realities of room, I use a Kindle but still... it's a library!]

One book in the hardcover "coffee table" book area caught my eye... "A Day In The Life Of America".  Photographs, no surprise there, not too much written, again no surprise. All these pictures were taken on the same day across America, that was different!

It appears to be by Rick Smolan & David Cohen

It was like $3... I bought it! I figured I'd read it & pass it on.  I went in to pay & talked with the librarian a bit, seems she'd been a traveler and when she arrived in Vermont she felt like she had found "home". She just never left... 

Vermont as viewed from the covered bridge

Vermont was a nice place but it's land locked. 
I have to admit that if I'd seen Maine before I'd seen the Northern Lights in Minnesota while camped on Cass Lake that summer back in '91, I'd have gone to Maine when I retired from the Coast Guard!
Maine to me is a rural place, a dirt road but still just 20 minutes from town & the salt water. Just an hour from a "big city" (Bangor).

The book... 
One afternoon I went out, sat in the sun and opened the book "A Day In The Life Of America" and started at the beginning. A couple of hundred professional photographers are spread out across the country and they take pictures of American life that day... all day. The thousands of photos were whittled down to what made the cut for the book. The photos were arranged according to the time of day that they were all taken and there was a map with a dot to show where that picture was taken. This was done well!

I first noticed some places I'd lived or visited, that took me back to "when" these photos were taken, May 2nd, 1986. Then I had to remember where I was in May of '86 (Port Angeles, WA) and what was going on in my life (my daughter Brandy was not yet a year old).

As I went through the book I noticed little things... this was before digital cameras, they were using film. Watches, a lot of people were wearing watches... this was before everyone carried a cell phone that tells you the time. There were other things too.

Time passed. I was reminded of some things I had not thought of in a long time. I was reminded of a few things I wanted to look up & see how things had changed over the years. There were people named in the book, I wonder if they rose above the masses in the last 32 years?

It was like I had opened a time machine to that day in 1986... A very pleasant couple of hours!