Violin Rosin box with Dad’s High School Science notes

 Violin Rosin box with Dad’s High School Science notes

Description:

Violine-Rosin box (the outer sleeve of a matchbox style box) It is flattened so it measures about 1 & 3.4 inch by 2 inch.

Inside are two 1.5 by 2 inch booklets.  One is a Dictionary for Chemical Terms with Erno Szedlak written on the bottom. It is done in fine black ink.  It is 37 little pages with terms divided by letter.  It starts with Antiseptic and ends with Fusion.  The other booklet is done in tiny fine pencil and has biology notes. Pages include lists of vitamins, bones in the body, nutrition notes.  Notes about mammals.  The pictures has a diagram of a bird. I scanned them with a quarter for scale.

Story:

My father came to the US and didn’t know any English when he started high school in River Falls Wisconsin.  He graduated in four years.  He loves music and science.  He played trumpet and cello.  The Rosin case was no doubt for his bow.  If it was about being frugal with ink and paper or just showing off a precise steady hand my father had always liked to use tiny print.  When I was growing up he would include a paragraph in the bulletin called “Some Notes on Todays Sermon” SNOTs we called them.  The drafts would be written on 3 inch squares of paper in Dad’s own unique short hand.  These notebooks don’t have any of the short hand.  

My Grandma Szedlak did not throw things out unless she had to.  When her children left home she left their rooms as they were, We would visit the house in River Falls and when I was bored I’d wander upstairs and spend time nosing around in the closets and dresser and desk drawers.  I found this box in the top desk drawer and would look at it almost every time we visited.  On one of my last visits, I took and kept it.