July 27, 2024

Let's start with the good news: not a mystery (cheap or not) to be found. Also, among the varied contents of Box #3 are a lot of memories of my mother. This is fantastic.  The bad news: some of the books, especially at the bottom, really smell of mildew. This must have been one of the boxes that couldn't escape one of the floods we have had in our basement.

The box itself is another Allied moving box with a date, 8/11, and "Basement LR Books" written across the top. This means the box itself had to be packed initially at our Grand Rapids home, and not our ranch-style Livonia home.

I am not sure I remember a bookcase, let alone the books, from our Grand Rapids "Basement Living Room?" If there was a bookcase, it should have had a variety of rather "fun" books: sports-related; humor; t.v. or movie-related, as that big room (one of the rooms I most miss) was a giant play room for Lincoln, his buddies, and me, especially on football weekends.

Given the weird mix of books, I seriously doubt these are from there. I suspect again box re-purposing. Most present among the book genres is general reference, which means lots of big and heavy books again, much like the textbooks from Box #2. In the end, I find 36 books, 17 of them being true reference books. Our first two books about birds ("The Pictorial Encyclopedia of Birds" and "Birds Of America") are near the bottom, long relegated to storage because of their size while a half dozen much smaller, easier-to-quickly-grab bird books stay upstairs within arm's reach. Another random parenting book got shoved in here, a sure sign that this box's current contents came about after Lincoln was past "parenting advice." I also will just proclaim this now; no damn book on parenting helped, which says nothing about Lincoln as a child but more about the jungle that is parenting.

It is through some of these reference books that the first wisps of my mother emerge (through the mildew). Mom loved reference books because of the overview picture they could provide of a subject. In fact, I am sure "The Pictorial Encyclopedia of Birds" is one I took from their home back when Pix and I started showing interest in birds while in grad school. "Books Of The Century: 100 Years of Authors, Ideas and Literature," in beautiful hardback jacket, was a present from her. Sadly, sitting at the bottom (it is really heavy) it is the most mildewy of all the books. More surprising is my finding of "The Definitive Book of Body Language," which I don't even remember. As I leaf through it, I find a front-page clipping from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, date 9/30/2009, with a story of Ted Kennedy's funeral, Mom's handwriting capturing the date. I will assume that is when I got the book; was Mom trying to provide me some fodder for my first years as Davenport University Provost (with the body language book, not the clipping)? I feel somewhat ashamed for dispatching it to storage so quickly, as it barely looks rifled through.

Much of the reference books in these boxes will be rather dated stuff. In this box, I find a year in sports, Sports Illustrated kid edition, for 2008, a "Videohound's Independent Film Guide," a "Book Of Video Lists" (with ironically just 244 pages of lists and 500 pages of title index, for the cross-reference), and a "Cinematherapy: The Girl's Guide to Movies for Every Mood." I remember using the "Book Of Video Lists" a lot; I am a sucker for books of lists, ever since the 1977 release of "The People's Almanac Presents Book Of Lists." None of these, however, beckon to be returned to the ever more and more restricted space of the permanent collection of such books upstairs.

Outside of the reference books are three old books that appear to be perhaps rarer editions that Mom often bought us at antique stores, such as this edition of "Leatherstocking Tales" I found in the box:

I can kind of understand why she purchased this one or a copy of Charles Dickens' "Bleak House," but as for "The Collected Verse of Edward A. Guest," signed nonetheless, I got nothing. I don't have a guess as to who Guest was. (A quick Google search finds he was "known as the people's poet" in the early 20th century; he also lived in Detroit, which is probably the connection Mom saw to me.) Many of these older editions sit in a bookcase in the foyer for our front door. I hate that I had to pull these three out at some point and condemn them to a life of mildew.

For the first time, a box is revealing more about my education. The 1962 "American Literature Survey: 1800-1860" is one of Mom's textbooks from her undergraduate days that I borrowed as I went into my educational path of literature. I am sure I will find the other surveys in this series in other boxes. "Common Landscape of America: 1580-1845" is a classic American folklore text that came from one of my first classes at Indiana University, while Eugene O'Neill's "Seven Plays Of The Sea" and Langston Hughes' "Five Plays" go back to the fantastic American Drama class I took at IU, with Al Wertheim, mentioned with Box #1 as the professor who navigated my independent study on Australian literature.

Speaking of which, six works by Australian authors are in the box, including Kenneth Slessor's "Selected Poems," still bearing the price tag of 2 dollars and 40 cents, Australian currency. How does that compare to the copy of Henry James' "The Bostonians' found in the box, with an IU Bookstore price tag of $2.21, American currency. Honestly, there is a very good chance both of these were purchased within a few months of each other. What was the better deal? (I believe both were purchased used.) I also find some of my notes tucked into one of the Aussie books, along with a list of five names I don't recognize. I believe they may have been attendees at a summer South Pacific Literature seminar that Dr. Wertheim ran (summer of 1987 or 1988) where I helped transport the out-of-town guests. Dr. Wertheim was a wonderful mentor for me, dying way too young. I treasure making so many of these connections so early in this unboxing.

Finally, I am pleasantly surprised to see a few books clearly going back to my days in Morgantown. Some are archaic, like the "1998 Morgantown High School Alumni Directory." (Boy, how do these directories survive the rise of social media? I know all I care to know about my old classmates through Facebook. Finding them isn't much of an issue anymore.) More interesting is "Peaceful Patriot: The Story of Tom Bennett," a biography of a young man from Morgantown in the Vietnam War. Related, just as powerful of a memory, is "Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam," a powerful collection of letters written by Viet Nam servicemen. Beyond the compelling content, I remember this book as one of many I got with a gift certificate to the WVU bookstore after winning 1st and 3rd place for a graduate student writing contest. These are the kinds of memories I hoped to have opening these books, the kinds of reactions that can over-ride the discomforting sense of dampness.

Full series here.