I bought books at yard sales, estates sales, flea markets and used bookstores. There was such a store near my house called 10,000 Books. Probably could be called 9,950 thanks to me. Baseball, travel, war, animals, television, the Beatles, and other 60s and 70s rockers were my favorite subjects. I was also gifted a lot of books on those same subjects. I have books where they belong, on shelves in our living room and home office; and where they don’t, in boxes in closets, in totes and stacked on the floor next to my side of the bed.
I’m 70 now and I have a ton of books. And I don’t think I’m using “ton” euphemistically. My 1948 copy of The Library of Health is 1800 pages and it alone weighs eight pounds. Today it could fit on a chip the size of a grain of sand with room for the Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes, of which I have two.
I used to think it was cool to find, for five or 10 bucks, a coffee table copy of “The British Invasion” or Maps of Civil War Battles or The Immortal John Lennon published at 40 to 60 bucks.
Now I think it would be cool to be get rid of them, but I can’t. I lugged a hundred of them to my yard for a tag sale and nobody even looked at them. Nobody reads anymore, books at least, and everybody has a device in their pocket to tell them anything they need to know.
We’re getting a dumpster soon. Hope I don’t injure my back.
Jack Smiles and lives in Wyoming, PA. I find that sentence amusing. Not sure if he smiles because he lives in Wyoming, or because it’s in Pennsylvania.
