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Falling in Love Among the Bookshelves

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When I was growing up in a Butler County farmhouse out in the country, money was hard to come by and not squandered. There was (gasp!) no TV set and not much besides my family and the livestock to entertain me. My brother and sisters were much older than me and busy with active school and social lives. So I was always the tagalong. There were always books though. Once read, books were old friends, hanging around until I picked them up again. And I always read them again. Before I was old enough to read, there was a huge book of Currier & Ives engravings and I loved to drop into a world peopled with beautiful trotting horses pulling sleighs, ice skaters in muffs and flowing skirts and enormous railroad engines with billows of steam. Learning to read meant deciphering the captions below the engravings and dreaming of dashing along behind Alice Grey on a snowy day. Reading about Lad, a Dog by Albert Payson Terhune fired my desire to own a dog, not just any dog but a faithful tawny collie who would keep me company, lick away my tears and save my life (it might have been from falling through the ice or from that car speeding around the corner or maybe from our cantankerous cow, Cream, with the cock-eyed horn. Terhune’s book series was based on the very real Sunnybank Lad, “a thoroughbred in body and soul.” Freckles belonged to my sister, Cindy, and was a gift from our grandfather. I waited impatiently for the day when he would realize I was old enough appreciate the gift of words and dreams. I would borrow and read, falling in love over and over with the always-cheerful Freckles, his beautiful Angel, the ahead of her time Birdwoman and the majestic Limberlost Swamp. One book by Gene Stratton-Porter led to another. The velvety moths and the intriguing plants and birds of the swamp entranced me. Once through all the age appropriate books in our family library, I was enticed by the intriguing titles of Zane Grey—Riders of the Purple Sage, Black Mesa, Horse Heaven Hill, Arizona Ames. So I explored the American West through the eyes of Zane Grey, tasting the wind, feeling the dusty sage and experiencing the heat of the sun-soaked days or the cold of the western winter. Mom’s collection of books by Peter B. Kyne and B. M. Bower had less colorful titles but what the heck. They were still fun to read and had interesting characters. I loved the stories about the Flying U. Eventually, I moved onto a small shelf of paperbacks in my mom’s bedroom with Dorothy Eden’s spine chilling thrillers, Emily Loring’s G-rated romances and Georgette Heyer. Possibly, if you have read my other works, you may guess how I feel about Georgette. At least once a year, I would pull out Mom’s entire set of Heyer, one book at a time and savor each delicious, witty word. Mom only had about thirteen books, but each one was a gem. I was devastated when for some reason, she either sold or gave them away. Since then it has been an on-going search through garage sales and used bookstores to build my own collection. One wonders, did my own children find that kind of joy in my library? Were they able to step through doorways and into The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright or A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony? Illustrations #1 Currier & Ives print #2 Lad a Dog book cover #3 Freckles' Birdwoman #4 Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage #5 Currier & Ives print