Bluffton Forever: The Icon invites viewers to contribute stories from the 1950s

Oral history may not be entirely true, but it makes a good story.

A couple years ago The Icon flirted with the waters of Bluffton oral history. Some claim we fell head-first into the National Quarry, while walking around it.

Either way, we surfaced with a lung full of stories placing them in a book. Appropriately called “A Good Place To Miss: Bluffton Stories 1900-1975,” it is now out of print.

If that book inspired or disgusted you, wait until you hear the Icon’s latest attempt at the great Bluffton novelette. The theme is Bluffton in the 1950s. (Think: The only way from Florida to Canada is on the Dixie Highway – right down Bluffton’s Main Street.)

With the working title “Bluffton Forever,” our follow-up to “A Good Place To Miss,” should provide hours of entertainment or arguments, depending upon your point-of-view of Bluffton in the ‘50s.

Ever so optimistic, our staff hopes to complete this project in time for Christmas, but Easter 2015 sounds more realistic.

The beauty of this book is simple. Some people living in Bluffton survived the 1950s and have stories to prove it. We want to hear them. We want to print them.

We invite Icon viewers to come forward to contribute stories for this ambitious project. We’ve already interviewed several of you, and have about 10,000 words of content. We need about 25,000 more words to make this a product that merits a spot under your Christmas tree, or Easter egg basket.

Time is short. We need to conclude our interviews by the end of June. That’s about six weeks off.

Icon viewers with story ideas or who care to contribute written stories, please contact us at [email protected].

Should our working book title “Bluffton Forever,” resonate with you, then you’ve experienced Bluffton in the 1950s. And, we know you have a story to contribute.

(Spoiler ending): If our title is meaningless, wait until the book is published. We’ll explain the facts of life from a 1950s point-of-view to you at that time. (The title is the Bluffton High School fight song, which has fallen into hard times since the 1950s.)