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There used to be a tall narrow bookcase built into a corner of the stairs in the house on Lyon Street where my Dad was born.
At least I think he was, for he never told us much about his childhood— how his parents both died, leaving him and his three brothers as teen-aged orphans — how there was a housekeeper who looked after them till they were old enough to stand on their own feet.
When Dad came home from WWI, he shared the house with Uncle George, but then bought him out when he married my Mom and filled the house with us kids.
The bookcase
Back to the bookcase in a minute, but first I want to tell of learning to read. This was in the days before Dick and Jane, you understand.
How well I remember being able to open The Reader and read for myself: “I have a little cart; will you ride with me?” and other thrilling whatnots. Then before long, it was the Saturday comics and 10-cent funny books.
One day, I discovered that there were books in that tall narrow bookcase.
Some were “old lady” books, but some had stories for boys, no doubt being there from the days of the orphan boys. It was a real find!
Les, the climber
Now trees seemed to have been beyond the capabilities of this chubby seven year old, but the ladder-like shelving of the bookcase was more like it. And up on the very top shelf were some important looking volumes — an encyclopedia. The date was 1905 as I recall it.
Wow, what a lot of long words and coloured pictures of fish and bird eggs. And in volume #5 was a multi-layer picture of the human body that could be peeled off, bit by bit, to reveal the secrets of the various muscles and organs. Why I was not inspired to become a doctor I will never know…
And upstairs
Then up at the top of the stairs was another bookcase in which were a number of well-thumbed books about The War, with many a picture of cannons and trenches and weary-looking soldiers. And my Dad had been a soldier, too, you know.
Just for boys
Oh, the adventures that I had when I opened The Boys Own Annual, or Chums, or read about Tom Swift or the Alger boys. And those stories about the early airplanes! How those books could take a little boy to places far away and hard to reach, even at meal time. And while the books are different today, I am still a little boy who gets lost in a book.
Electronic books?
What’s all this about reading a book on a little screen thing? It all sounds a bit too advanced for me, I guess. Maybe next year…
The Library
Our fabulous local library is getting ready for its annual book sale and is calling for donations of your old books. So if you can bear to part with them, now is your chance to make some spare space in your bookcase — maybe ready for some new ones.
This post was originally published on here
