On Books

What a privilege it is to be able to read. For as long as I can remember, books have been some of my best friends. I don’t recall when or how I learned to read, or even who taught me – as far as I know, I slid out of the chute with a pair of glasses on my nose and a book in my hand. I don’t remember being read to as a child, but surely someone did, didn’t they? Doesn’t every parent read to a child? I know I started reading to mine the day we brought him home from the hospital, and didn't quit until....well, he's nearing 20, and much to his dismay, I'm still trying to read bits and pieces of things to him.

There are a myriad of favorite stories and Little Golden Books with which I have populated my adult library (under the guise of purchasing books for my son when he was wee.) Pokey Little Puppy. Peter Goes to School. Mike Mulligan’s Steam Shovel. The Little Engine That Could. Then there was Little Black Sambo. Alas, that was no longer published by 1990, so my son never heard the tale of the smart little boy who out-witted a bunch of hungry tigers until they churned around a tree so fast they turned into butter, and then he had tons of pancakes for supper. I so loved that book - wish my mother had saved it. I once tried to get my little brother to run around a tree so he’d turn into butter and go away forever. It didn’t work. (Today some smart-ass child would file a class action lawsuit against the author, the publisher, the store that sold the book, and whoever read it to him. The Happy Man and His Dump Truck! I loved it when the pigs went flying out. Grandpa Bunny. Saggy Baggy Elephant. Tawny Scrawny Lion. Tootle. I can see I need to get into the LGB bin and pull some out for nostalgia's sake.

I could go on about Little Golden Books forever, but eventually I grew out of them and started reading chapter books. I was never a Nancy Drew girl, but loved the Hardy Brothers and the entire Trixie Belden series and there were even a few chapter books about the Lennon Sisters and the mysteries they solved. I lived a very sheltered, and to my mother’s way of thinking, a very proper life, befitting a young lady of the times - no bicycle…those were for boys. No sports either. I learned to sew, and cook, and most especially, the proper way of ironing (I think I was taught that one because my mother hated it.) I learned how to pick the vegetables that I would later learn to clean, snap, pit,and ‘put up.’ In my spare time, I was allowed to read and play with my dolls. (There was a huge fight between my mom and her dad once, when he showed up with the fire truck I so desperately wanted. Grandpa lost.) As I got into those chapter books, they took me away to a world where girls had worth outside the home, rode bikes, got dirty, had adventures, and occasionally even spit. – all the things I longed to do, but knew I couldn’t without getting my backside tanned.

Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, Pippi Longstockings (what little girl wouldn't want to be her), the Danny Dunn series, Mrs. Pickerell, Toby Tyler, and then the bonanza of all bonanzas was revealed to me. I was led to a box that housed a gift that my parents bought when I was born; The Young Folks Shelf of Books, also called The Junior Classics. Ten books put out by Collier (the Encyclopedia people) that was the ultimate classic reading guide for the well heeled young child. How I treasured those ten books, each brightly colored binding housing some of the best reading I’ve ever done.

Volume one was fairy tales and fables, and they had them separated by what country they were from. Two was stories of wonder and magic: Beatrix Potter, Uncle Remus, Carl Sandburg’s Rootabaga tales, Mary Poppins, Pinocchio, Pooh, Peter Pan, The Arabian Nights, Hans Christian Anderson stories, and those by Howard Pyle and Frank Stockton.

The third volume dealt with myths and legends. There I discovered the Vikings, Odin, the Golden Fleece, old Navaho stories, Celtic tales, and the saints. Next book covered heroes…Odysseus, The Song of Roland, El Cid, Beowulf, King Arthur, and Robin Hood. Five was aptly called “Stories That Never Grown Old.” Alice and that silly old White Rabbit, Nicolette, Dickens, Gulliver, Don Quixote, Kipling’s Kim, Sleepy Hollow, good old Rip Van Winkle, Robinson Crusoe, and the Swiss Family Robinson. All scaled down versions for the 8-10 year old set, but enough to make you get to the library and check out the real thing as soon as you could. There was a book with stories about boys and girls: Heidi, Tom and Huck, Caddie, Penrod, and of course Little Women.

The volume about animals never really interested me much – none of the titles seem familiar. I suppose I need to give it another chance someday. Volume 8 was stories from history and I loved that one! It’s where Rudyard Kipling, Rachel Field, Esther Forbes, James Fennimore Cooper, Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas, Sir Walter Scott and all the myriad of other became such good friends of mine.

The ninth book was unbelievable…adventure! King Solomon’s mines. (I later fell in love with Deborah Kerr and Stewart Granger because of the book. What a film!) Sherlock Holmes, Amelia Earhart, Anne Morrow Lindberg. Wow. I think I’ll be picking that volume back up tonight.

The last book was my favorite, however – poetry. It started with nursery rhymes, and moved on. From the ones I marked, as a child I was fond of almost anything Emily Dickenson, Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll (‘twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe…..who knew what it meant, but to a child, it was way cool.) Eugene Field’s gingham dog and calico cat, and Wynken, Blynken, and Nod. Longfellow’s Hiawatha (good old Nokomis), Barbara Frietchie, Whitman’s dear Captain and so many others. There are also checks next to good old Billy Shakespeare, William Cullen Bryant, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

If you can’t tell, I now have those books in my possession, copyrights 1938 and 1948, and they mean more to me than just about anything, because in so many ways, they are my childhood. I can let one fall open to a well-read page, and more than likely cite chapter and verse of something it triggers from 1957, or 1961, or 1968 as I desperately looked for something easy to memorize for class. I now own hundreds and hundreds of books, but when it falls back to those that mean the most, it’s those Little Golden Books from my earliest years, and the Junior Classics my parent bought in 1950 for their new baby girl. I wonder if they knew that 60 years later, I'd still get so much enjoyment from them?

Nashville Airport Observations

The past week, I have spent approximately nine hours in the Nashville airport (I don’t recommend it to anyone) and have had more than my share of people watching opportunities. One of my favorite games is to sit there and play “Who’s the Spy?” There has to be at least one international spy in every airport y’know, and I saw him last Thursday at BNA. Medium height, stocky, swarthy, black hair with enough oil in the back comb to fuel my CRV for a month. He was wearing a very expensive black silk suit, white shirt with cuff links, black tie, and top dollar shoes. He spent well over an hour walking here, walking there, always looking around him, and never making eye contact with anyone that I could tell. Unlike everyone around him, he never touched a cell phone. That was a dead give-away, because we all know that calls can be monitored. Was he there to make a hit? Meet a La Cosa Nostra member from the old country? I pretended to read my Kindle and kept track of him from behind my Foster Grants. After over an hour of discreet observation, I was quite disappointed to see him standing at the bottom of the escalator with a sign……he was merely a chauffeur waiting on a late arrival. The spy was probably the granny sitting next to me.

I adore the reunions between grandparents and grandchildren. I really love it when the little guy spies the much loved grandparents and squeals their names as they go racing across the floor to be scooped up. Gramma, Grampa, Nana, Boppa, whatever…..it makes me choke up, missing my own, all of whom have been gone many years.

On a random note, the Nashville airport has more guitar-toting people and more tattoos than I have ever seen in my entire life. It also has the market on tall men with toothpick legs – and they all wore jeans so tight I could tell their religion.

Another observation is that people in shoes pretty much all walk the same way, but put a pair of flip-flops on the same feet and things change. First off, why do so many wear open toe shoes/flip-flops/sandals with their toes hanging over the front of the footwear? Here’s a hint….buy a size that fits the entire foot! It doesn't cost a penny more. As far as styles of walking, first off are the flat-foot flip-flop wearers who raise the knees in order to walk and land the foot flat on the ground without the usual heel to toe rolling motion. They remind me of a horse in a dressage competition, and I want to shout out tips to improve their style.

There are those afraid of losing the flip-flop. They are the ones who have their toes clenched tightly to the keep the center thong under control. They make me want to watch them walk away to see if the butt is clenched as tightly. Loosen up! Wear some sandals with straps and stay away from watching prison movies or “Deliverance.”

The oddest flip-flop foot walk I saw belonged to a woman who when lifting her foot to step, also lifted her toes away from the flip-flop, curling them upwards as if they were trying to touch her ankle. As soon her heel hit the floor, the toes curled completely up, only to come in contact with the shoe when the toe area had to push up off the ground. That walk fascinated me. I practiced it in the privacy of my hotel room, but never even came close to mastering it. It will probably haunt me the rest of my days.

After that, I'll probably just keep my toes under wraps while in public.