Monthly Archives: January 2010

31-W Garage, Bowling Green, Ky.

For most of the 1950s, the 31-W Garage stood at 95 State Street, providing auto parts and service to Bowling Green motorists.  During 1950, owner Andy Raby kept an account book recording his daily receipts.  This account book is now housed in WKU’s Special Collections Library, along with many other collections of records, clippings and photos that document the history of Bowling Green businesses.

As the 31-W Garage account book shows, gas prices in 1950 were about 27 cents per gallon – Bowling Green resident Duncan Hines (yes, that Duncan Hines) paid $2.70 for just over ten gallons.  At first glance, this seems like a real bargain but, adjusted for inflation, works out to about $2.39 per gallon at today’s prices.

A finding aid for the 31-W Garage account book can be downloaded here.

Browning Club, 1989

“All weather and winds are alike / Skies may be smiling or frowning / Earth’s a forgotten dream to one / Who opens a volume of Browning.”  These lines by Bowling Green author Eliza Calvert Hall reflected the joy with which Americans in the late nineteenth century embraced the poetry of Robert Browning.  Beginning in the 1880s, Browning Clubs sprang up across the country, providing women in particular with the opportunity for intellectual and cultural stimulation as well as fellowship.

Bowling Green’s Browning Club was founded in 1895.  Although its main purpose was to read and study the poet’s work, discussions soon extended to history, politics and music as well as authors and literature in general.  A year’s worth of club programs usually explored different aspects of a general topic: for example, Thomas Hardy (1928-29), the seventeenth century (1933-34), Russia (1937-38), Latin America (1940-41), and Shakespeare (1950-51).

The Browning Club has recently donated a collection of its club materials to WKU’s Special Collections Library.  Included are minute books, membership information, clippings, photos, and program lists.  Most of the material dates from 1950-1997, but the programs date as early as 1913.

These materials expand the Kentucky Library & Museum’s collections documenting the history of many local men’s and women’s clubs, including the XV Club, Twentieth Century Club, Ladies’ Literary Club, Current Events Club, Mothers Club, Fortnightly Club, Warren County Garden Club, and others.  For further information, e-mail mssfa@wku.edu.

Scraps to Quilts exhibit, 1986

In 1986, students in WKU’s Folk Studies program created “Scraps to Quilts: Derby Fabrics, Women’s Quilts, and Family Stories,” an exhibit of local quilts that had been made using fabric scraps from the Union Underwear Company’s “Derby” plant in Bowling Green.  The students began by inviting owners to bring in quilts to be photographed and have their histories documented.  The Kentucky Museum then displayed a selection of the quilts from April to October 1986.

Although the physical exhibit is long gone, the information collected by the students, including photo proof sheets and negatives, quilt data sheets, audiotaped interviews, exhibit labels and associated research, remains available in WKU’s Folklife Archives.  A finding aid for the “Scraps to Quilts” exhibit materials can be downloaded here.