While examining books from the old schoolhouse in the 1940s-50s, we found several filled with drawings by former students at the time.
Dogfights and Desk Doodles: The Secret Wartime Art Discovered Hidden Inside Our Old Schoolhouse Textbooks
Moving the old book collection into the new reading area at Dyment Recreation Hall was supposed to be a simple chore, but it quickly turned into a bit of a treasure hunt.
These books have lived in this building since its days as a schoolhouse, and as we dusted off the covers to line the library shelves, we realized the former students had left behind more than just thumbprints. Between the dry chapters on history and math, the margins are absolutely packed with “marginalia”—the frantic, bored, and surprisingly detailed doodles of kids whose minds were clearly miles away from the classroom.
One drawing in particular stopped us in our tracks. At first glance, it looks like a chaotic explosion of pencil, but look closer and you’ll see a dramatic scene of World War II aerial combat. A Nazi warplane is caught in a total death spiral, with a thick, heavy coil of black smoke pouring out of its engine after a direct hit. The student even sketched the “bad guy” pilot bailing out in the corner, turning a boring school day into a high-stakes action movie played out in pencil.
It is a wild, unedited piece of folk art that feels like it was drawn just yesterday.
It is fascinating to think about a kid sitting at a wooden desk decades ago, ignoring a lecture to recreate the dogfights they probably heard about on the radio or saw in the newsreels. The swastikas on the wings and the shattered fuselage show that these students were hyper-aware of the world on fire outside their schoolhouse walls. They weren’t just doodling; they were processing the biggest event in human history in the only space they had available. It turns these old textbooks into accidental time machines that capture exactly what it felt like to be a kid during wartime.
We’ve decided to keep these “vandalized” books right on the shelves for everyone to see. They are a hilarious and human reminder that students haven’t changed all that much—we’ve all been that kid staring at a chalkboard, waiting for the bell to ring and letting our imagination take flight.
Next time you stop by Dyment Hall to grab a book, take a peek in the margins. You might just find a secret history of the neighborhood sketched by a bored student from eighty years ago.
About the Author
