Sunbonnet Soliloquy
By Jewell Ellen Smith
The
Case of a Bookcase
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Moving a hundred or so books
from one set of shelves to another looks like a simple task. It shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes, 30
at the most.
It doesn’t work out that
way. I’ve been trying to re-stack a
bunch of books for three weeks and haven’t finished yet! However, I’ll be obliged to get through
before the sun goes down today! For as the
man of the house left for work this morning, his parting words were to this
effect: "Bye, Honey. Now honey, today please try to get those books put
up. I’m tired of lookin’ at ‘em."
Then he glanced back over
his shoulder toward the stack of books in the corner of the breakfast room, and
muttered, "Your beat-up old books and shelves like that make a regular
eyesore."
I nodded my head but didn’t
say anything. Main reason he is so
insistent that I get on with the project is that he is the carpenter--or should
I say, furniture-maker--who built the fancy bookcase which is to hold what he
calls my beat-up books. And the new
bookcase is lovely. It’s big. It’s heavy.
It’s ornate. And it looks old,
for my husband designed it especially for the collection of antique books.
Main reason I’m having such
a problem sorting out and placing my ragged treasures is that many are so
worn-out and dog-eared the titles are no longer legible. And when I open up a volume to see what it
is, I naturally start thumbing through pages and looking at pictures. I begin reading. Next thing you know, I’m carried away by some oldtime tale, and
half a day slips by.
When night birds cry
It happened that the very
first book I picked up--three weeks ago--was a comparatively new publication, a
history of Oglethorpe county, Ga. It
sort of fell open, and I took a minute to skim over the exploits of a Mr.
Crawford from Scotland, who had come to Virginia, then moved to the Carolinas,
and finally in 1783, made his own way down to Georgia.
Next came these lines:
"Nancy Wilder, another of the North Carolina emigrants, was a maiden woman
who lived in the slashes of Long Creek.
She did the weaving of the neighborhood and other things appropriate for
a lone single woman to do."
And that was all. The next paragraphs were devoted to other
settlers.
Nancy Wilder! A beautiful name. But poor lonely lady.
Wonder what ever became of her ... if she ever married ... who cared for
her after she grew old, her eyes so dim she could no longer see to thread the
loom ... what were her thoughts in the evening, late, when the sun was gone and
the night birds of Long Creek began their cries and prowling wolves set up
their howl?
That first day I worked on
the books, I got five in place. The
following days I made somewhat better progress. And today I can see the bottom of the pile!
But this difficulty in
getting the books restacked is nothing to compare with the complicated delays
that cropped up as I was trying to get the case built. That took nine years.
How it came about was this:
When we built our Alabama country house, back in 1963, it cost twice as much as
we had figured. Result was that new
furniture seemed out of the question.
The only bookcase we had, we placed in the daughter’s room. But it wouldn’t halfway hold our ordinary
books, much less the youngsters’ school texts, a 30-volume reference set, and
my ever-growing collection of old books.
"Honey," I
announced at the breakfast table the day after we moved in, "I’m just
going into Enterprise and get a nice bookcase.
I’ll simply charge it! Just look
at that pile of books!" I pointed
over to a mound of cartons and pasteboard boxes still stacked in the corner.
My husband put down his
coffee cup. "No, now don’t do
that, Honey! We need other stuff worse
than bookcases. I’ll build you
one! I’ve always wanted to make a
bookcase."
"All right. But meantime what’ll we do?" "I’ll fix you some temporary
shelves."
And he did, that
morning. He took long planks left over
from building the house and propped them up with bricks in such a way as to
make two makeshift bookcases--one in the corner of the breakfast room, the
other upstairs in the boy’s bedroom.
That was fine. And it continued to be fine. I didn’t say much. Occasionally I’d mention how we really needed the bookcase. But I didn’t make an issue of it.
When brown shelves sag
One by one the children were
growing up, marrying, and moving away.
But I noticed that none of them wanted to take along with them high
school or college textbooks. These and
other books we were acquiring right along continued to stack up. And each year I found more and more old
volumes to add to my collection.
The book planks turned
yellow, then brown. Both the ones in
the breakfast room and those upstairs sagged but didn’t break. Then about 1969, I believe it was, I just
decided one day that five or six years was long enough to wait for a bookcase.
At the supper table that
night I said, "Honey, do you think you might get to making the book
cabinet sometime soon?"
Before he could say yes, no,
or maybe, number two son put in his bid: "Yeah, Pop! Build it,
and make me one too! Those old
boards up in my room look pretty bad.
And I’ve got no place to put my tape recorder and radio. Say, Pop, build me a fancy cabinet! You can do it!"
Pop could. And did.
He made the boy not one, but two cabinets--a sort of twin set, with fine
veneer work. Nice pieces of furniture!
I just waited, knowing that
my bookcase would be next. By
Christmas, more than likely.
Meanwhile, number one son
and his wife came home from a lengthy stay overseas--bringing their firstborn,
our first grandchild. What a
delight! I would rock the baby, and
Grandpa would hold the little fellow on his lap and say, "coochie,
coochie" to him.
One afternoon I heard the
furniture--maker turned grandpa whisper to the baby, "You cute little
dickens! Your grandpappy is going to
make you a rocking-horse. Yeah, a real
rocking-horse."
I thought, "Yeah, this
cute little dickens is still too young to hold up his head! But he needs a rocking-horse, right
away! And grandpa will make it!"
Grandpa made it. It took him about three months--working in
his spare time--but when he got finished, it was a dandy. Perfectly balanced. And he had decided to shape it like a duck
instead of the usual horse. It could do
everything but quack.
When proud grandpa was
wrapping the duck to put it under the Christmas tree, he remarked, "Just
think: when I’m dead and in my grave the baby will be showing this to his
grandchildren and telling them how his old grandpappy down in Alabama made
it."
I didn’t say so, but I
thought, "Yeah, I’ll be dead and in my grave too, and those same
grandchildren will come to this house and wonder why the old grandma down in
Alabama always kept her antique books propped up on planks."
In the spring after that, I
mentioned the much-needed bookshelves again.
"Well, Honey, you’ve
said all along you want it to match your oak dining table. That means it’s going to have to be built up
on legs. I really need a good lathe to
turn the legs."
When
Santa Comes
The following December word
was sent to Santa, and on Christmas morning there was a lathe under the
tree. The carpenter was delighted. Soon he was turning out exotic lamps, candle
holders, novelty gadgets. And not a
thing was said about the bookcase.
Months slipped by. As Christmas approached again, I ran out and
bought some more antique books so I could drop just the right hint. And along in September--this last September--I
said:
"Honey, just look at
all these books, now! See, in this last
batch I got me an 1879 McGuffey! Soon
as you get the bookcase made, I can set all my readers right on top!"
"Yeah, Honey. Only thing is, if you want me to make the
legs of the bookcase exactly like the table there, I really need a router--to
put in all these little grooves."
We both looked at the legs
and grooves and at the ornate carving work on the under part of the table.
"I just hope I can do
that carving! Say, Honey, did you know
that you can get an attachment that you can use to duplicate ‘most any carving
work? They cost like the deuce, but
boy, are they ever worth it!"
Came Christmas, and the
router was under the tree. Came the
carpenter’s birthday, and the attachment that cost like the deuce was beside his
cake.
Came Mother’s Day a few
weeks ago, and Father had the lovely bookcase in the corner! How the late afternoon shines on it and
makes every grain in the wood fairly glow.
Late afternoon sun! Yi-i-eeks!
I’ve got to get the rest of those beat-up books in place! Else I’ll be tossed out of this house!
And I don’t want to be any
lone Nancy Wilder living along the slashes of Claybank Creek, or the Pea
River. There’s no telling what the man
who now has a lathe and a router and a carving attachment might make for
me--nine years from now!
Published June 1, 1972. The bookcase in this piece now resides
proudly in the home of Jewell’s older son David Smith.