B.D. McKay's High School Diary

Dec. 1933 - Feb. 1934

B.D. kept a diary for three months in high school, which now stands as his earliest extant piece of writing. B. D. attended Charlotte Technical High School, or "Tech" High. This was a vocational school (elsewhere B. D. mentions a drafting class). His fancy for Mary Estelle did not last long, because by his senior year it was replaced by Sara "the pen blobbed" Shaw. This diary spans the winter of B. D.'s junior year, because he graduated in (the spring of) 1935.

Page 1 (Cover) - Page 2 - Page 3 - Page 4 - Page 5 - Page 6 - Page 7 - Page 8
Page 9 - Page 10 - Page 11 - Page 12 - Page 13 - Page 14 - Page 15 - Page 16
Page 17 - Page 18 - Page 19 - Page 20 - Page 21 - Page 22 - Page 23 - Page 24
Page 25 - Page 26 - Page 27 - Page 28 - Page 29 - Page 30 - Page 31 - Page 32
Page 33 - Page 34

The diary was kept in a small composition book with a string-bound spine. Of all the papers reproduced here, it is the most amazing to have been preserved so long, especially to be as fragile as it is. The pages were so brittle with age that the notebook was disassembled and each page placed into an acid-free plastic sleeve for preservation. All of the pages in the notebook were the same size. The reproduction of the pages mercilessly trims any unessential whitespace on the pages which contains no writing, to make the file sizes smaller. All of B.D.'s writing and his doodles are preserved.