Dredging up the past

Since Bobby got me interested in chess again, I rejoined the U.S. Chess Federation after having been away for over 30 years. Their magazine says that your old "rating," or strength based on your record against other rated opponents, is forever. I had no idea what my rating was from my play as a 12 year old, so I sent a message to the USCF. Here is my message, and the reply:

SUBMITTED TO WEB CONTACT PAGE
From: Joe Kristan
Date: Wed 7 Nov 2007 8:55:03 pm CST
Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9
Subject: USCF 1209: Ratings Question or Problem

Hi,
I have rejoined the USCF after 30+ years away from chess (thank my 9-year old's school chess club). I had a rating back when I was 12 or so, but I have no idea what it was. Is there any way it can be retrieved from your old records, or should I just start over as unrated?
Thank you,
Joe Kristan, West Des Moines, IA
PS: If it helps, I lived in Gurnee, IL when I played as a kid.



Joe Kristan: It appears that you had a rating of 1090. I can't tell how many games you played as the second tournament has its games crossed out and scribbled on. Your first tournament had 6 games so you have anywhere up to about 10 games played. The tournaments were from 1973.

Walter Brown

USCF

I love it that somewhere in the archives of the USCF they have the records of games I played in 6th grade! It's like finding a ancient report card. I'm surprised the rating was that high. Still, I bet I could whip my 12 year-old self...