Fair’s Fair “For Book Lovers”

The absence of televison in our home, and the lack of a public library in the small Newfoundland outport where I grew up allowed me to travel all over the world through books my father had collected. My mind teamed with their wonders: people, places, animal kingdoms . . . .

My fisherman father, a lover of books, built a bookcase in our "front room". Its two doors had glass inserts to show books he had garnered or inherited from his father. I read his books, even when the words were hard enough on my mind to give me a headache. Reader’s Digest, Family Herald, Time and The Weekend Telegram were also digested. The illustrated Doctor’s Book, kept under my parents’ bedroom mattress, gave me the scoop on unmentionables. It also showed the heart, not the Bible version of black, white and evil, but red and lumpy and beyond the recognition of the shapely Valentine image.

Summertime, during my teen years, I earned a little money caring for younger siblings while my mother helped my father process codfish on the stagehead in Hibb’s Cove. Later, on a trip to St. John’s, I would stop at the door to Dicks and Company on Water Street and look up at the sign in the shape of a book over the door. As I entered the store, the powerful scent of a room full of new books overwhelmed me, their mysterious insides shut like seashells holding pearls. Even now, the memory is powerful enough to swish me through time and plant me on the floor of Dicks & Company where I finger five dollars in the pocket of my skirt, finding my choices so overpowering that I stand there staring, awed at being in the presence of so many voices, their mystery and their power, and happy that I have money to take two of those books home.

When my emotions settle enough, I pick up book after book and look inside their covers. I gulp with hunger. I buy two hardcover book for five dollars. I will read them during the sunny days of summer, savoring each page and again over the stormy winters.

There was something wonderfully comforting about being able to curl my toes under flannelette sheets in my bed, my feet settled on a round rock, smoothed by the sea, and warmed in the oven fueled by coal or wood while winds howled outside my window.

Since then, city libraries have opened up a vast world of reading material I can access, but the scent of new books is as powerful an ambrosia as it was then, and there is nothing as wonderful as opening a brand new book to find the pearl inside. American Emily Dickinson’s quatrain comes to mind:”There is no frigate like a book/ to take us leagues away/ or any coursers like a page/ of dancing poetry.”

Postscript: I have since learned that the Dicks who owned the huge bookstore I loved so much were related to the Dicks in my family.
_______________________________________________________________________
Bio:
Nellie P. Strowbridge, once a columnist and freelance writer with several newspapers for several years, has won numerous awards. Her published books include Widdershins, Doors Held Ajar (tri-author), Shadows of the Heart, Dancing on Ochre Sands, Far from Home, and The Gift of Christmas. The Newfoundland Tongue is accepted for publication in 2008.

Painting by Monet

——————————————————————————–