| In spite of the
limit on the number of books one could check out at each visit, I made my way
through just about everything in my age level in two years. By the summer before
fifth grade the librarian informed me I had outgrown this section and asked my
mother if I could start going “downstairs.” Heaven, I was in seventh heaven when
she said yes. The earliest memory I have is of standing on a step gazing at all
of the tall shelves, so many more than I had ever seen in one place. I may have
felt overwhelmed, I guess, or drunk on the notion of “all of this can be mine.”
Who remembers that many decades ago? Mr. Dewey Decimal and I entered into a long
and beautiful friendship, well, until the Library of Congress Classification System
came between us.
This brings me to the subject of my recollection. I don't
remember exactly when it took place, but it was fairly soon after I graduated
to downstairs. While browsing shelves immediately to the right of the front entrance
I ran across a title on the spine of one volume that triggered a memory and I
pulled it down to have a look. The book was Erskine Caldwell scandalous novel
about a family of extremely poor Southern sharecroppers, Tobacco Road. I recognized
the title, or maybe it was an association with a term used by my mother to describe
people and situations way down on the ladder of life that were definitely to be
avoided, and decided to make it one of my selections that day. After making all
of my choices I went to the main desk to begin the check out process. The librarian,
who seemed very old to me but was probably only in her early 50's, at most, helped
me. When she picked up Mr. Caldwell's dark tale her demeanor changed slightly,
but I was too young and too ignorant to do more than barely register it. I'm sure
I promptly forgot about it. I was a kid and it's what they do. I recall her asking
if I was sure I wanted that book and with my affirmative reply she said something
about needing my mother or father's permission first. My folks were divorced and
my brother and I lived with our mother so it fell to her to say yea or nay. The
“library lady” called her at work, got the necessary consent and the die was cast.
I was spending the day downtown by myself, naturally feeling pretty grown up,
and I planned to do some shopping until my Mom picked me up at the library after
work. The shopping was mainly window type at Kress's, Woolworth's, Neisner's and
Morgan & Lindsey's, the four five and dimes (yes, I know, groan) located within
a couple of blocks of one another and of the library. They were crammed with an
intoxicating amount of “stuff” to see and drool over. I nearly always began these
days with breakfast at the lunch counter at Morgan & Lindsey's, which opened before
the rest of the store, and enjoyed two large, hot, fluffy nickel biscuits and,
gasp, a fountain cherry Coke served in a cone shaped paper cup sitting in a burnished
metal holder, also five cents, plus a nickel for the tip. That tip was pretty
important, according to my mother who had “hopped cars” as a young woman. When
the stores opened I'd begin traipsing up and down the aisles looking at the things
that caught my interest. I rarely had much money to spend, but it cost nothing
to look and look I did. Tangee lipstick was my favorite item at the cosmetic counters.
I just loved it's distinctive sweet scent and couldn't figure out how it's bright
orange color could turn a brilliant deep rose after it was applied. No other scent
is like it and I think I can still smell it in the olfactory part of my brain,
only just. Sometimes there were lipstick and cologne testers available and I'm
pretty sure I went home looking and smelling like a bawdy house trainee a few
times. (See Crockett Street in Beaumont.)
Sometimes I picked out my books early in the day and then had to lug them all
over that part of downtown, from store to store, but I wised up eventually and
did my shopping first. Midday usually found me sitting atop a tall stool at Kress's
lunch counter, short, stumpy legs dangling, dining on the best tasting hot dog
with chili ever served anywhere in the universe, accompanied by a side of Dentler
Maid potato chips and, yep, you guessed it, another fountain cherry Coke. Same
beverage, different station. I believe the dogs were fifteen cents but I wouldn't
stake my life on it.
But I digress, something for which I have a real
talent in case it ever becomes an actual profession. The librarian did call my
mother at work and she, not being a big reader of fiction and no doubt unaware
of the scatological content of Mr. C's sociologic study of poverty in the Deep
South, okayed the loan. I was equally clueless, given my tender years, so I read
the entire book with absolutely no earthly idea what it was all about and have
only a single, extremely fuzzy memory of a couple of people up in a tree. I had
no idea what they were up to so high in the branches (pun noted) until I read
the book as a young adult. Then it all seemed just sad, tawdry and repellent and
the patches of humor too black for me to appreciate. My take on it as a child
was that it was a book and therefore I was compelled to read it. I read cereal
boxes, my brother's Boy's Life magazines, movie posters, GRIT, advertising signs,
church bulletins, comic books, in short, just about anything containing the printed
word. I devoured print the same way I devoured those biscuits at the Morgan &
Lindsey's lunch counter.
The major fallout from my early meander on the
wrong side of the literary tracks came from my father, and it was much more than
a couple of inches to the conservative right of the librarian's slightly raised
eyebrows and pursed lips. In those days my brother Butch and I used to go downtown
to visit him for a couple of hours each week or two. He lived in one of the hotels
there and would send a cab for us. He nearly always quizzed us with the standard
adult's catechism, what and how we had been doing in school and whether we were
minding our mother, and often he asked what we had been reading. Sad the day I
rattled off the current list including the gloomy tale of the hapless Lester family.
Willie's Edwardian roots ran deep and he accompanied us home that day in the cab.
He and my mother had a heated discussion about my unsupervised reading habits
which ended with Estelle snapping in exasperation, I daresay, ”Oh, Willie, I haven't
been able to keep up with what that kid reads for a long time and I don't intend
to start now!” Thus, my First Amendment rights were protected under the Bill of
Rights, as somewhat loosely interpreted by my mother.
© Frances
Giles
"True Confessions and Mild Obsessions"
July
23, 2012 Column
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