All history, like all politics, is local; it has to happen someplace or other. But most of it escapes the notice of historians, even local ones. So here we all are, up to our necks in history, and making more of it every day, without anyone to sort it out for us.

     If we happened to live in the same place as,  let us say, the ancient Hittites, we could look our forerunners up in the Berkeley Public Library and get some idea of how they lived. We love Hittites, of course, and wish their civilization hadn’t expired some 3,200 years ago. But how can we get to know the people who walked our streets and lived in our  homes 50, 75, or 100 years before we did? How does our McGee-Spaulding District differ from theirs?

     This section is a serious but we hope not solemn attempt to answer such questions. In it you will find extracts and summaries from various historical sources that shed light on the details of our District’s past. Some of the stories are sad, tragic even; many are comic; and not a few are trivial but odd as only bygone trivia can be.

     The present, too, has its oddities. It was only a few months ago that a neighbor of  ours was going door to door asking  after a white chicken; apparently it  had left home without explanation. Now if only someone had thought to record what happened to that chicken . . . .