June Frankland Baker

Photos, Cars, the Past

I like old books and old photos. My interest in what people used to think and how they used to live was probably heightened because I grew up near the historic city of Schenectady, located in the Mohawk Valley of New York. Schenectady, settled early by the Dutch, was attacked by a French and Indian force in 1690 during a war between Great Britain and France. Sixty of the village’s inhabitants—men, women, children—were slaughtered; twenty-seven more were taken prisoner and forced to go off through the snow to Canada. The cabins were burned. Later the settlers rebuilt within this original stockade area; streets lined with those 18^th century buildings can be visited today. The first term paper I ever wrote I researched at the Schenectady County Historical Society about this Schenectady massacre. I was a child during WWII. The past was close. As an undergraduate I specialized in history and English, then earned an M.A. in American Civilization and taught history and language arts. And as you can guess from one of the poems in Issue Number 25 of the Notre Dame Review and the poem included for this web page, I also like to study old cars.