Boy at newsstand (1948) - CARLI Digital Collections Featured Image

Of all the children dressed like tiny adults in the digitized photo collection Daily Life Along the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, this boy browsing the railway depot newsstand in Lincoln, Nebraska, is my favorite.

Travel with my seven-year-old twins means cotton clothes with elastic waistbands and non-stop iPad time, so I marvel at this young passenger’s collared shirt, sweater, cuffed pants, and matching wool coat and hat combination. But while I find his outfit old-fashioned, I can relate to his reading choice from my own childhood, when family trips (in a station wagon, rather than a train) meant stacks of comics.

Unbeknownst to this newsstand browser in 1948, he’s experiencing the comic book’s Golden Age. By the early 1950s, the industry would be struggling, in part because of concerns that reading comics led to immorality and juvenile delinquency. After that, rock music was the supposed cause of ruining America’s youth, followed by television, and now computer screens.

As a parent, I know I’ll continue to worry about my children’s Minecraft addiction, even while my inner archivist recognizes that future generations will find our concerns (and our travel wear) amusingly quaint.

Written by Jen Wolfe, Digital Initiatives Librarian at the Newberry Library

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