A LIBRARY, A BOX OF BOOKS, AND A KINDLE

Carnegie Library, Huron, SD 1909 ~ 1965

I am grateful that my parents, my teachers, and the phonics-heavy “Alice and Jerry” series in first grade taught me how to read. Beyond these seminal reflections, I hold in memory two distinct episodes of what were, without exaggeration, life-changing experiences of the introduction of books into my life – books as physical objects of learning and enjoyment. I was apparently a good reader from the start. But it was these experiences that turned me into a book reader:

It was probably the summers after third, fourth, and fifth grades that I would ride my bike the eight blocks from our house to the Huron Public Library. At least part of the time I must have been participating in an organized summer reading program for kids. (Here’s to summer reading programs for kids!) I think I had a chart to fill out. The memory is as much physical and tactile as it is mental: The cool marble floors of the 1909 Carnegie Library building, the hot summer day left behind outdoors, the meaningful hush produced by the neck-craning grandeur of the high ceilings and book-lined walls, the kid-height bookcase island in one of the alcoves. And, of course, the solid feel of the book as I pulled it from that case – just browsing, I discovered it myself – and the light riffle of the pages as it falls open to “How the Leopard Got His Spots” in Kipling’s “Just-So Stories,” and the scrape of the chair as I take the book to the nearest table. I can’t wait until I get home – I’ve got to read this here: “How the Camel Got His Hump,” “The Elephant’s Child,”…. The memory is of the book – and the place of the book. The temple of the book.

Then, comic books (now I am exaggerating), until:

In my junior year in high school I was looking for something in a back corner of our basement, and I came upon a box of books. Hard-cover books with slip-covers intact. Not musty and smelly, but clean and almost like new. Like all smart young moderns, my parents had belonged to the Book-Of-The-Month club in the early years of their marriage, and this was a trove they had packed away in our move from Huron to Rapid City (or maybe earlier). It was the thrill of discovering “Just-So Stories” all over again – and the weighty feel of these tomes: “Clarence Darrow For The Defense,” “Dear and Glorious Physician” (a novel about the Apostle Luke – with some authentic, uh, earthy parts in it if you get my meaning), a novel called “Yankee Pasha.” I read book after book out of this box. And, like the bookcase in the Huron Library, I still have a picture in my mind’s eye of exactly where I found that box, and I’ve been a book reader ever since. (I didn’t return to comic books, although I’d kill for a good copy of “Donald Duck and the Pony Express Rider,” c. 1958.)

The rapid development and acceptance of the e-book (ten of the last twelve books I’ve purchased have been on Kindle) cause me to wonder (not rant – just wonder) what experiences children will have in the future that may be equivalent to the cool alcoves of the Carnegie Library or finding that box of books in my basement.

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Addenda:

It is obvious from the modest building pictured in the photo, above, that I am remembering it from my kid's-eye view. But it does kind of look like a temple, doesn't it? It was torn down in 1965 and replaced by a blond brick building of one level. You know what that looks like. It doesn't look like a temple.

I have another Carnegie Library memory. In the sumer after my junior year in college, I had a job selling dictionaries door-to-door (forgive me) in Washington, Indiana. There, too, I came upon the cool confines of an historic Carnegie Library on a hot day. I visited again and again, my dictionary bag slung on the back of the chair. It was during those visits that I discovered the treasures of The New Yorker, Harpers, and The Atlantic magazines -- which have become part of my life. The lure of the library was such that it, shall we say, interfered with my sales performance. I ended the summer owing the dictionary company twelve dollars.

This now-classic video depicts similar wonderment at the transition between the use of the scroll and the printed book. (Just in case you haven't seen it.)

I have reflected on my gratitude to those who introduced books and reading to me in this post: "Thank You, Miss Zamow,"  -- and more experiences with discovering books in "The Lord of The Plastic Revolving Book Rack."


I am proud, happy, pleased, and excited that one of our daughters is a librarian. She and her lively colleagues have moved far beyond Carnegie 1909, and have answers to book questions that I haven't even thought of asking.

THE LORD OF THE PLASTIC REVOLVING BOOK RACK

My local grocery store has a paperback book rack that I’d never really noticed before. This time I noticed it and brushed by, supercilious nose in the air. What literary nourishment could I possibly find at Nelsons County Market? But then I had a flashback – to a time when I did, indeed, find a number of interesting books displayed in just this kind of rack.

When I was a senior in high school, I did not disdain such displays. Miss Zamow, my A.P. English teacher, had ignited an interest in reading, and whenever I was in the drug store in Baken Park (Rapid City’s first strip mall – this was 1964, it had to have been one of the first strip malls in the country), I’d spend long minutes twirling the plastic tower of books, hoping to find something as engaging as “Return of the Native” – our most recent A.P. assignment.  (Although I’ve tried in vain to convince my daughters that I was not, in fact, a nerd in high school, they’ve, alas, seen the class photos. I’m afraid I’ll have to admit that the best way to picture this scene is to imagine that kid from Napoleon Dynamite listlessly watching the books whirl by on the rotating rack.) Anyway, it is at that very rack that I discovered Solzenhitsyn’s “One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich.” Who knew! A world classic at Rexall.

Later, a spin of the same carousel brought forth “The Lord of the Flies,” then (speaking of spinning carousels), Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes.” (No one evokes a midwestern boys' world like Ray Bradbury.)

After my first year of college I had a job in a small town in far northeastern South Dakota. In another drug store at another plastic rack I picked up a book called “The Lord of the Rings” because the title reminded me of that other “Lord” book that I had recently read. I took it back to my room, opened it, and didn't close it until I got to the end, saw with panic that it "continued in Book Two," jumped into my car, and zoomed almost frantically among the other small towns of that quadrant of South Dakota until, on another rack in some other corner pharmacy, I finally came upon “The Two Towers.” (A week later the cover headline on Time Magazine was “Lord of the Rings Sweeps the Nation’s Campuses.” Thus, I’ve always taken credit for being the American discoverer of J.R.R. Tolkien.)

A few years later, visiting my wife’s farm home, we drove into town on some errands. Another small town, yet another Rexall Drug Store. This time it was the fat paperback edition of “Lonesome Dove.” I had never heard of it or Larry McMurtry – so once again a good read was accompanied by the joy of discovery.

I could go on. Actually, I couldn’t. From that time on I graduated to the world of funky neighborhood book shops, Barnes and Noble, and, now, Amazon – leaving the paperback racks circling backward into the past.  But I wonder? Have I been missing something? Just when I’ve discovered Whole Foods, the Atlantic food editor is recommending the produce and groceries of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart! Should I, in fact, be looking among the paperbound spy thrillers and bodice-rippers next to the film department at Walgreens to find (or even discover!) the next great contribution to world lit?

It would be a good ending for this essay if I could report that I went back to that grocery store book display and found “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” or “The Sonnets of John Donne: A New Interpretation.” But I didn’t. I didn’t go back, that is. But next time I walk by, I’m going to pause … and look… hopefully….

THANK YOU, MISS ZAMOW

I love Garrison Keillor's quip: "The English major is the guy behind the counter who says, 'For whom is the cheeseburger?'." I get the joke, but I'm a grateful English major nonetheless. I started college as a drama major. (I learned how to glide -- not stride -- across the stage. Don't laugh; I'll show you sometime.) Then I switched to Biology (which, unfortunately, included chemistry), and landed at what had been my real love all along: English. English was my first love because of Miss Zamow.

There are four distinct encounters with books and reading that I remember fondly, even excitedly, as I re-trace a literary path that has carried and continues to carry me through the world. The first is the "Alice and Jerry" series in first grade. (Yes, I know, everybody else was reading "Dick and Jane." Any other Alice and Jerry readers out there?) Did I actually find the backyard and neighborhood adventures that they shared with their dog, Jip, to be interesting -- sometimes fascinating? Yes, I remember that I did. But the series really took off for me when their neighbor, Mr. Nightingale, was introduced. He traveled all around the globe, and (except for the fact that I did not yet know the word) seemed very "worldly-wise." I hope that I was an advanced child, but I think the phonics-heavy (and, yes, fun) three-to-five-word sentences of "Alice and Jerry" taught me how to read.

The next is my mother's bedside reading of Tom Sawyer. I think I was eight. What is there to say? What eight-year-old boy wouldn't love this adventure. At that age I surely must have been reading "chapter books," but perhaps I remember this as the first book I "couldn't put down." And it undoubtedly forms a memory because of the comforting presence and voice of mom, there at my bedside. I entered parenthood with the organic understanding that this is what a parent does, as surely and naturally as providing food and shelter: He reads to his child. Especially at bedtime. When I talk to parents about this, I always say, "Dads, don't let mom have all the fun." (More about reading with our kids in a later post.)

In ninth grade English class we read Moby Dick. Now, I just re-read Moby Dick and found it magically wonderful, but it caused me to wonder, "Did we really read the unabridged Moby Dick in ninth grade?" I don't know, but it worked. (Plus, I liked the teacher. She was kind of pretty and was known among us kids for never wearing the same outfit twice -- ever. I guess at some point someone started to keep track.)

Miss Zamow (zay-mo) wasn't pretty. (Sorry, Miss Zamow.) She was simply a great teacher. An English major should try to avoid these cliches, but she opened the world of literature to me. I can't cite the date, but I can see the second-floor corner classroom at Rapid City High School and I know the setting and circumstance: It was a circle of about twelve chairs, and in that circle we talked about the book we were reading, The Return of the Native.

That's it. Sitting in a circle and talking about a book (with Miss Zamow a part of the circle). That was something I'd never done before, and I've loved it ever since -- sitting in a circle and talking about books. Perhaps two other contributing elements: It was Advanced Placement English, so we had the class size and ratio (not to mention, interest) that every classroom at every level should have, and Miss Zamow loved the books she was introducing to us, and, although she was rather non-demonstrative, she loved being part of the conversation and she liked us.

(She had a wit that was so dry as to be non-existent, but it was there -- always delivered with a completely straight face. Once, I made a wisecrack and she said -- straight and unsmiling as ever, "I see we have a clown in our midst," and then continued on to the next point. Of course that made me love her all the more.)

I was exposed to a tremendously talented and lively faculty of English professors at the small midwestern liberal arts college I attended -- and many more circles. But I never experienced a more enjoyable or instructive class than AP English with Miss Zamow. Did I ever, once, go back to Rapid City High School and tell her? Of course not.

I would love to sit in one of those circles with you (perhaps now with a glass of wine) and hear stories of your "Miss Zamow." Alas, our virtual circle will have to do.

(P.S. Have you observed, as I have, that our best teachers often have some sort of eccentricity about them?)