‘Don’t buy too many crusty old books!’ says LJ, as I’m about to leave the bunker. She does so with a smile, but is only half-joking, being the sensible one who concerns herself with savings, pensions, health, and always carrying a brolly in case it rains...
Crusty old books...but they bring me such pleasure, these pages from the past...bound words from bygone eras...some are almost 100 years old! Some have heavily creased spines where so many hands have held them, hands which may now be no more than bony digits buried in a box 6 feet under the earth...but once...once they too turned these pages. Under the light of a lamp they left their DNA there...and if I were to romanticise, I may even say their spirit...some essence of themselves...
Who marvelled at the design of The Book Of Bond back in the swinging 60s? A youth, besotted by 007...who dreamt of driving an Aston Martin DB III, complete with reinforced steel bumpers...
Who left his prints on The Blue Book Of Crime way back in the 1940s? A future criminologist? A detective, perhaps. He would read that an American Bureau of Identification office is ‘Clean, with Plenty of Light and Fresh Air’, and that ‘many advantages and benefits go with this profession: Steady employment; good pay with regularly monthly salary checks; two weeks’ vacation each year on pay’ etc. ‘Remember, this work is free from danger’, the book tells him. Well, perhaps that deters him if the thrill of danger is what he seeks...
If only books could talk...imagine what they have seen...the marriage break-ups, fights, passions and poverty, joy and sorrow...in so many rooms, in so many faces they have seen time do its work, etching lines around the eyes gazing down at them...
An apparently fragile pulp paperback has the last laugh...Burlesque Girl by Orrie Hitt is now 53 years old, yet it has survived to tell its tale of Valerie London, ‘Miss Rotary of Springville and Miss Resort land’, who ‘took a shot at the big money the night she peeled off her clothes ’...it has outlived a few of its readers no doubt, and it will outlive this one...
Well, I returned empty-handed today, save for a cauliflower. And they, as you’ve probably discovered, hardly make for good reading. LJ, however, will find it more satisfying than another crusty old book...
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