Excerpt from Nostalgia and Glee in Sycamore, Illinois

Memories are such a sweet sadness. They bring laughter through tears. We live again our childhood and youth as we dwell with memory. As we all don our crowns of gray and move toward the inevitable eternity, it is an almost universal wish that we could be suddenly transported by a miracle of science, back to the days of sandlot baseball and the ol' swimmin' hole. Most everyone wishes, too, that he or she could live life over only better and no one would want to miss the fun we had in our younger days.

Please pardon us for entering so much of our own person al memoirs We took the liberty of doing so because, to our great surprise and greater disappointment, we found the humor of history the most difficult of all to find and, making the dis appointment much worse was the fact that we had very foolishly thought it would be the easiest.

We have made no attempt to give you all of Sycamore's history and humor, nor all of its available human interest sto ries. To have done so would have demanded a volume of huge proportions. It would have been so costly that you would not have accepted it.

One word or two of warning. The first section dealing briefly with a chronological history of the Sycamore area has some fascinating information now and then, but practically no humor. The next section, dealing with our churches, is treated with devout respect, but you will find some quiet humor in it, too. There are bits of humor to be found scattered all through the book after you pass the chronology.

We have tried very hard to give you an interesting book, but because this was our first attempt at a project of this kind, we have fears. As we write this preface, near the end of the job, we are not at all satisfied with our book. We hope and pray you will not be disappointed, but we offer our apologies and say we are sorry just in case.

It has been a lot of work. We walked many miles. We worked at our desk every day that our health would permit, alsomany nights, holidays and Sundays.

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