Last weekend in Nashville, my sister discovered in her attic the newspaper equivalent of a time capsule.
“You might want this,” she said as she dropped a dusty, three-ring binder in front of me on her kitchen table. In 1992, my mother (now deceased) had made a scrapbook of my “Life Stories” columns from The Chattanooga Times.
I’ve never been one to fuss over old clips, but I spent about an hour flipping through the notebook. More than anything, it struck me that the collection of columns was a snapshot of life in America 19 years ago.
Chattanooga was just emerging from the early 1990s recession and was entering, well, the Age of the Aquarium. For historic context, think glamour photography at the mall, the early ascendancy of talk radio, Japan phobia, 8 percent home mortgages and a new guy running for president named Bill Clinton.
As I looked through the binder, I found myself wondering how the people in 1992 would have fared if fate had dropped them in the 21st century.