When I was growing up in the deepest of the South, I learned to love to read. There was no television, no radio, no neighbors. Side note: also no toilet, bathroom, AC, or clean…dirt. Everything was brown. Everything was brown except for books. I knew I was poor. I knew that there were better things outside of a sharecropper’s farm.
Even though I suffered from crippling anxiety and introversion I asked the lady on the bookmobile if she could come to my road. I was six. Remember the crippling anxiety? I could not even say “yes” when someone offered me ice cream. I never spoke unless necessary. I approached cautiously but with the greatest desire for books. She asked my address and I supplied it. She explained that it was not on the route but since I wanted books she would come visit.
Every two weeks (two long weeks) the bookmobile would pull up into our yard. I would tumble out the door with the last offering of five books. I would browse and be allowed five more. They even upped the number of books I could check out to ten after I explained that I would re-read those five at least three times in two weeks.
When I was a teen, I found a local resale shop. I could BUY books for twenty-five cents. I found Lord of the Rings, James Bond, Remo Williams, The Brothers Grimm. I was in heaven. Then my overly “religious” aunt L found one of them in her son’s hands. I was forced to burn my stacks of books. My dad was not on board with this as some were Louis L’Amour. Never the less, my mother made me take them out and burn them. Among them were books that are out of print and I mourn their death.
I surround myself with books now. I buy them at library sales, I buy them online, and I buy them at garage sales. I read and pass them on to others. Some become such beloved friends that I buy them in leather just to stroke their spines. I whisper “you are my favorite” but they know I can’t really say that is true. Books to me are a life-line and an escape.
I am older now and my children will have to deal with their destruction or dessimination. I really don’t care…except…just as thought. Can I have my books made into a coffin? A coffin of books so that I really can take them with me.
msboothe 