Library Day
When I was about ten, I was allowed to walk up to the square in our village and go to the book-mobile. I would get as many books as I could carry. They were thin, so I got quite a few. Back home (you don’t know you have too many books until you have to carry them a couple blocks) I’d spread out a blanket on the grass and lay on there with my stack of books. Not being conscious of the need to make the books last until the next library day, I’d read them all in one afternoon.
I also took time to watch the clouds. I hadn’t studied clouds in school yet. I was of a mind that the clouds were stationary and the earth turned beneath them. I would stare up at the clouds, imagining my speck of a self lying on the surface of the planet, slowly turning, and the still clouds showed how fast I was moving along beneath them.
Summer days were a fine thing. They were the days of one-piece sun suits that tied at the shoulders, of going barefoot or, at worst, wearing flip flops that hurt the space between my big toe and its neighbor for two or three days of very dirty feet at end of day, and of freshly cut grass, leaving a checkerboard look from the lawn mower wheels.
Our dog, Minnie, would be tied out on the front yard, tethered to a metal cork-screw spike that went into the earth. She would be stretched as far from the spike as she could get, making a taut line for running children to trip over. She saw it as he mission to warn off passers-by.
There were other good things about summer days, but those are for another time. Thank you for visiting with me. May these memories bring to mind some of your own.
