ST. CLOUD, Fla. — A city crew in St. Cloud was driving down a road when they noticed a small book in the street.
"We ended up over here on Wednesday. We were coming through here, and as you can see, we were trimming trees," said Robert Prather. "[I] noticed the book lying on the ground, just lying on the road right in front of the truck."
It turned out to be a diary from 1931, and the man who found it wants to find the family of the man who wrote it.
"Just kind of looked through it real quick, and it would mean something to me if it was mine. I have things that belong to me from my grandfathers from both sides," Prather said.
The daily diary dates back to the beginning of the Great Depression. It documents the author's life in detail.
"Every day is logged in here from Jan. 1, 1931, to all the way to Dec. 31 of 1931," he said.
In pen or pencil, it records nearly every event in the author's life that year. The death of his mother, interactions with his children, but mostly, he documents about how hard life was during the Great Depression.
"He was not a lazy guy by any means. Everything in here is talking about him building hay barns and corn cribs and stacking hay and repairing his own shoes. Every day, even holidays, he was working," said Prather.
The author records his excitement at having finally saved $100 in a bank account.
But who is this thrifty hard worker? Modern technology would soon reveal him.
Prather posted pictures of the diary on Facebook and the post blew up.
Dozens of people responded, trying to find the family and identify the author.
In under five hours, one Facebook user discovered who the author was: Oral "Buck" Hyer, who was born in 1907 and died in 1963.
"I even had a gentleman put on there his obituary," said Prather.
In a life spanning two world wars, Hyer fought in one of them, became a school teacher, married and had four children.
While Hyer was a church-going man, he wasn't afraid to gamble some of his hard-earned money.
"He had went to Villanova and beat a slot machine for 55 cents. 55 cents! 55 cents means nothing to anybody nowadays," said Prather.
Prather said the diary may mean something to someone and he hopes to find them.
"I hope that the person that this belongs to or the family that this belongs to comes forward so we can put it back in the rightful hands of the person who owns it," Prather said.
WFTV
