Patrick Pickett

This book calls itself a "history." It reads more like something a social club would put together by culling their old meeting bulletins.

Which makes a certain amount of sense, since it was assembled by the "Seaside Retired Citizens Club." Evidently they gathered together their scrapbooks, and this is what came out.

There is a section on the history of the town of Fogo. Indeed, in some ways, it's unusually detailed. (Want to know who owned the first motor vehicle in Fogo? It was the Marconi operator Mike Walsh, who had a Model T Ford in 1928; the first actual local resident, as opposed to visitor, to own a car was Thomas Butler in 1929. You can also learn when the churches were built, many businesses founded, etc.) There are other chapters that could be useful to an historian -- e.g. a list of everyone from the town to serve in the World Wars, or a list of all the members of the Town Council.

But there is also what amounts to the Fogo School Yearbook 1992 -- a list of staff, a couple of newspaper accounts about graduates, a list of those who earned college scholarships. The section on "Social Life" has four "Newfoundland Recipes." There is the guidebook used by the staff at a sort of local museum. It really is very "gossipy."

There is nothing wrong with any of that. It's just that it's not something likely to appeal to someone outside Fogo. I got it, frankly, mostly to try to find out more about a couple of old folk songs. I didn't learn much. But, at least, now I know. They don't know who the Bouncing Girl in Fogo was, either. Sometimes, you have to settle for small victories....… (más)