A READER
Over the past couple of years, I have intended to spend one hour a day clearing ancient junk from my basement. I haven’t started yet. I wanted to toss out the disintegrating boxes and their content without looking inside but I am disinclined to throw something away without first examining it. I couldn’t get myself to take that drastic an action. I also could not bear to disturb the history sleeping in those boxes. Motivated by curiosity and suspicion that “something in one of them may come in handy someday”. These opposing urges have frozen me in a state of inaction.
Then a week ago the furnace stopped working. I couldn’t figure out why. I had to clear a path through the basement so the repair man could find his way to the furnace. One of the objects in the way was an old box. I picked it up fearing that the weakened cardboard would crumble under the weight of its contents and moved it. But now it was in the path to the washing machine. I couldn’t leave it there. Grudgingly, I faced the necessity of dealing with this box and its contents.
This particular box had not been opened for over 30 years. I wondered what could possibly be in it that would be of any value. I picked it up and headed to the trash bin. On the way, I passed the chest freezer with nothing on top. I set the box down on it, just to take a peek inside. There I found, carefully wedged into the bottom of the box, a neatly folded paper shopping bag and a package. There was an assortment of glass vases and other junk piled on top of them. I had no problem recycling and tossing the things on top. It felt good to be throwing things away. Again I thought to throw the rest of the contents in the trash. But no. I had gone this far. I opened the package. It was stacked full of floppy disks from the 1980s, during a time when I was teaching in Saudi Arabia. knowing that I no longer had a device with which to read them, I looked through the floppies. I was hoping the labels would reveal some valuable content. Most of them were outdated software which I threw into the garbage container. That left the paper shopping bag. Again on a high for having been able to toss the floppies, I thought how easy it would be to put the paper bag in the trash also. But I had to look. The bag contained old books. A Spanish-English pocket dictionary in which was written “tod lundy Mexico City College”. It was my constant companion for those three months when studying Mexican culture and language in 1971. The rest were old books, in bad shape, which, one by one, I tossed into the bin. As the books were dropped into the bin, one small badly worn book lingered in my hand. It seemed to say “Look inside before you toss me out.” I set it aside. I could not have imagined the treasure that I would find in it.
Later in the day I settled into my lazy-boy, picked up that old book, and opened it. I found it to be a book of short stories, published in 1914, intended for first-year high school students. Inside the cover was written my dad’s name, Washington High School, and the date Jan. 1924. I looked further and found authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe.
The first story in the book was written by Washington Irving. It was titled “The Spectre Bridegroom” or in modern language, “The Ghost Bridegroom”. The writing was immediately captivating. I kept reading becoming entangled in a magnificently revealed plot of fascinating characters, a tragic death, mistaken identity, and a compelling love story. Upon completing it, I said to Carole, “Having seen how beautifully a master can handle the language and create images in the mind of his reader, I will never attempt to write again.”
Upon finding this wonderful thing in an old box. I am now motivated to paw through the remaining boxes hiding out in the basement.
Although I declared that I would never write again, I wrote this, didn’t I? I did so with the understanding that it is better to write poorly than not to write at all. And, I needed something to read if called upon in tomorrow’s writing group.