Remember Dick and Jane, Spot and Puff?
They were the chief characters in my first grade reading books in Pine Bluff, Arkansas when I was six years old. Instead of learning phonics, I learned to read by recognizing the whole word at once.
"See Spot run..."
"Jane will not play..."
"Where is Dick?"
"This is Puff. She is a kitten..."
By the time I was in fourth grade, I was devouring whole books. I would get lost in them. I often got in trouble because I didn't quickly respond to Mama's summons to come to dinner, so lost was I in a story.
I began to collect books at an early age. This activity was somewhat curtailed in my childhood since we moved so much, but since in moving I didn't have to be responsible for the whole household's boxes, I was able to keep track of my own books and other treasures without giving up any of them.
Not so after I married Dave. We moved several times before we made the monumental move to Alaska, but during those five years I bought a number of books. I was a member of a book club, and therefore added regularly to my collection. Dave learned early on that while books are not heavy individually, a whole box of them can nearly break your back. He complained loudly, but I ignored him. It never occurred to me to reduce the number of books somehow... Some of them I felt I could not bear to part with; they were like old friends. Some of them I had not read, but intended to some day. Some of them, like the dictionaries, a person would probably never read the whole thing through, but certainly would like to look up a word from time to time. I just let Dave grumble.
After we moved to Alaska in 1969, Rachel grew from a babe-in-arms to a curious toddler. Then we returned to San Diego for about a year, hauling a covered trailer with our basic belongings, like clothes, dishes, tools, sewing machine in cabinet, pictures, and, of course, books. Lots of books. Heavy books.
Then after a few months of no work in San Diego, Dave decided he could surely get a North Slope job, so we moved back to Alaska again. That time he bought a big truck and packed... yes, you guessed it, our furniture, plus our basic belongings, like clothes, dishes, tools, sewing machine in cabinet, pictures, and, of course, books. Lots of books. Heavy books.
By then Rachel was talking ninety miles a minute. She loved being read to. I started collecting Dr. Seuss books, from ABC to Green Eggs and Ham. I read them to her all the time, and she adored them. After a few times of hearing the same ones over and over, she could quote them verbatim. So I was always buying more and more of them, plus other chlidren's books. I bought them at bookstores. I bought them at thrift stores. I bought them at garage sales. Our collection of books was probably doubled or tripled by the time the Cat In the Hat came to our house.
After Jon was born in 1975, we moved back down to the Lower Forty-Eight, so we could be near my parents while Dave worked on the North Slope. The children and I flew down after Dave had bought a forty-acre farm near Bakersfield. Dave hauled all our stuff in a big truck he bought at an auction. He brought all those books along with everything else, complaining all the way. He didn't complain about clothes or shoes or dishes or tools. All those things he considered useful. He just did not see the value in having a whole library of books, when he was not really into reading, but he was the one who had to pack them and lift the heavy boxes, and figure out where to put them after hauling them forty-four-hundred miles several times.
We stayed in Bakersfield only a few months. My parents briefly enjoyed their grandchildren until Jon was ten months old and Rachel finished the first grade. Dave worked on the North Slope, on the Pipeline, during those ten months. He finally decided it was not worth it to be gone from family so far away and so long at a time. He quit the high paying job on the North Slope and returned to Anchorage, to three side-by-side vacant lots we had bought during our previous years in Alaska. We had stored a couple of eight by forty trailers there as well as an old camp trailer. He lived in the camp trailer while he set up one of the bigger trailers with water and septic tank, and then started building a house on one of the lots. He lived on one meal a day (at McDonald's) for a couple of months until he had the trailer (sort of) ready for the family to live in it.
In June, 1976, I flew back to Anchorage, bringing Rachel who had just finished first grade, and Jon, ten months old. Dave settled us in the eight-by-forty trailer and finished building the house during the fall and winter. In the spring of 1977, we moved into the house with hardly any furniture, except the necessary things which we bought at an auction in Anchorage.
Dave returned to Bakersfield, rented out the farm, and with that big truck and brought our stuff back up the Alcan, forty-four hundred miles.When we unpacked the truck, I could not find our books.
When I asked Dave where were the books, he half turned away, shrugging his shoulders.
"Didn't you pack them?" I asked. I couldn't imagine that we had zero books. There should have been at least six or eight boxes of them.
"No."
"What?!" I just knew he was kidding.
"I burned them," he said, again facing me squarely. "I was tired of hauling all those books up and down the west coast. I tried to sell them with the furniture and stuff, but nobody wanted them. So I burned them."
I was devastated. I wondered why he didn't give them to a thrift store or something.
He said in order to do that he would have had to pack them, in which case he might as well have put them in the truck and brought them to Alaska. "We're gonna live right here from now on, and I'm not hauling books anywhere else if we move."
So that was that.
I began collecting again, though. I ended up with a huge collection of Dr. Seuss books by the time Jon was old enough to enjoy them. All my children could quote a lot of those books...
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