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Reading Talking & Library Gossip

January 26, 2012 By Talya Tate Boerner

I love libraries. In junior high I volunteered in the school library for Mrs. Perry, our librarian. She taught me how to sort and arrange books, and how to properly align them on the shelves. I dusted the book jackets and wiped down the reading tables at day’s end. I loved the smell of the books and the lemon pledge. I still do.

While visiting my home town, I planned to spend some time at the public library, which was one of the only places with wi-fi. I was looking forward to this, because I had fond memories of that place. Growing up, my sister and I spent many a hot summer day there. We walked to the library while our mother had her hair styled a few blocks over at Lucille’s Beauty Shop. This was when kids could play outside all day long and not end up on the 6 o’clock news as a kidnapped, decapitated victim. This was when the primary crop in the county was cotton, instead of crystal meth.

I remembered the building well. It was a stately, two-story, brown brick building with large white columns in front. Inside, the space was serene, clean and organized – everything I came to love. The librarian commanded respect with her low voice. She looked and acted the part. A card catalog whiz, she was kind, yet strict and orderly. I’m sure it was in her job description. I became best friends with Nancy Drew in that very building.

Fast forward 33 years: Oddly the building had mysteriously shrunk. The columns seemed smaller. The inside was tired and chaotic. Most of the reading tables had been replaced with study carrels equipped with computers – a sign of the times. The two remaining reading tables were covered with cardboard boxes of books – seemingly donated – haphazardly stacked, uncataloged and unorganized, leaving no room for actual reading! Checking out a library book seemed almost secondary there. It was a sad state of affairs.

Books, books everywhere, but no
place to read….

To say that it was difficult to concentrate on my writing was a wild understatement. Evidently library etiquette had changed since I was there in the 1970s. It was now acceptable to use your “outside voice” inside the library, to each other, to yourself, or on a cell phone. And the cell phone could freely ring – no need to put it on vibrate. But it was NOT ok to take a lidded iced tea inside. I was required to leave my tea at the check-in counter totally unattended where anyone could slip in a roofie. But I am a rule follower, so I complied.

Although thirsty, I learned quite a bit about a variety of topics. The first day, I assisted my carrel-mate with her spelling as she hand-wrote “prison letters”. The second day, I inadvertently memorized most of the GED questions as the man across the aisle read the questions over and over aloud. The lady adjacent to me was working on her cosmetology license. I’m pretty sure I could roll up a perm now. Do people still get perms?? I also learned the citizens were in an uproar over the high electric bills in town. They blamed the mayor.

The library workers were an interesting group. Mr. Librarian actually assembled a salad for his lunch on the counter while demonstrating the proper way to cut and chop an avocado to the other workers. I think I saw him wash it down with a swig of my tea. He was on a low fat/high protein diet except on Saturdays when he liked to eat Mexican food at Mi Pueblo. He coached the other workers on the difference between good fat and bad fat. He scolded them about eating bad fat, quizzing them to see if they really knew the difference. I wonder, did he get this information from a library book? On day three of my library adventure, there was a lengthy debate among the library workers centered around smoking. The conversation became heated when Mr. Librarian posed the following, “Why did God invent tobacco if we weren’t supposed to smoke?” I kid you not. I looked above my study carrel at these people, and almost blurted out, “But didn’t God ‘invent’ bad fat?????” I seriously needed to return to Dallas ASAP.

During the three afternoons I was there, one elderly man came in to check out books! Only one person. Bless his heart. Once I was convinced he was not a missing silver alert victim who had accidentally stumbled in, I was beyond thrilled. I heard him ask for assistance locating a specific book. He waited quietly and patiently for the conclusion of the riveting avocado demonstration. I almost jumped up to eagerly help him myself. Or cut up the damn avocado.

Mrs. Perry would be mortified.

talya

Musical Pairings:
David Allen Coe, “Jack Daniel’s If You Please”

Sinful Pies & Magical Jello

January 20, 2012 By Talya Tate Boerner

Nana’s Recipe Box!

While scrambling eggs this morning, my mother started cleaning a cabinet in her kitchen. It contained expired cough syrup and gummy vitamins, along with a shelf of old cookbooks. Basically, my mother hung up her apron in 1994 after my dad died, so I doubted these cookbooks had seen the light of the kitchen in years.

As we ate breakfast and drank coffee, she handed me Nana’s recipe box to peruse. I had no idea she had this bit of heritage hidden behind the spice rack like a secret diary. It was a small wooden box exploding with bits and scraps of papers, jammed inside at all angles so that the lid would not close. I loved to cook and try out new recipes so this was a treasure trove! Plus I remembered some of Nana’s delicious pies.

I carefully unfolded the bits and pieces of fragile paper which were yellowed and coated in an oily film- probably Crisco. I loved that I was touching papers that she had touched. Each was written in pencil, in her easily recognizable cursive handwriting. She wrote the way we were all originally taught in elementary school – slanted to the right with loops and curves and each letter gracefully flowing into the next. Most recipes had no title, and they all began with a simple listing of basic ingredients. As I read the ingredients aloud, my mother identified most, “Oh that was her fruitcake recipe”. And, “That was her chocolate pie”. Oddly enough, almost every single recipe included jello. Who knew jello was such a magic ingredient?

Studying the castoff papers on which these recipes were written was as much fun as reading the actual recipes. She was the quintessential recycler! Chocolate Pecan Delight was written on the back of the Keiser Baptist Church program from 1976. Nana was a faithful member of that church until she died. I still remember the preacher there (I’m Facebook friends with his daughter), and I knew the organist and Sunday school director, who were also identified in the program. The sermon on that particular Sunday morning was “Sin is Sin”. I think baking and eating pie every day was probably the only sinful thing she ever did.

Chocolate pie was written on a Bank of Wilson deposit slip, along with her grocery list for tuna, milk and sugar. An unnamed recipe was written on Keiser Supply Company note paper. We always bought our Christmas tree at Keiser Supply, and they sent us a giant smoked ham every year – the best ham ever.

I plan to try out these recipes. It will likely take years, but as this is part of our family history passed down in Nana’s handwriting, it seems like an important use of time. Maybe somewhere in this treasure box is the perfect pie crust recipe I’m determined to master.

talya

Musical Pairings:
Hymn, “Blessed Assurance”

Sleeping in My Bed

January 19, 2012 By Talya Tate Boerner

I’m home in Arkansas for a week or so. It’s always so good to be home, in the country, in my childhood home. Tonight I will be sleeping in my own bed, in the room my sister and I shared until I went off to college in 1980. It is super quiet and dark, the opposite of our Dallas home with sirens, lights, random gunfire and no stars in the sky.

Although the bright orange shag carpet is long gone, the room hasn’t changed much. I wonder if when the carpet was removed my mother noticed the burn mark under the bed? My friend Anita and I shoved an ashtray and lit cigarette under the bed one night when my mom came to the door, melting the carpet slightly. We tried really hard to smoke for about a week, but were never successful, thank goodness. And I doubt we ever inhaled- we couldn’t really figure it out.

Favorite books. Note – an Elvis book prior to his death.

This bedroom is a time capsule – like Graceland without the jungle room. But it is comfortable. My favorite paperbacks still line the bookshelf above my desk where I did my homework. My boxes of 8-track tapes are piled in a cabinet. Within the built-in drawers around the desk lies an archaeological dig, undisturbed for years, except when I occasionally sift through the hidden treasures. The deeper into the drawers you explore, the older the civilization. Letters my Nana and mother wrote to me at Baylor University, along with my college grades, are scattered on the top. Further down are high school pictures and newspaper articles. Still deeper, there is junior high cheerleader memorabilia. Near the very bottom of the dig are Valentines Day cards from elementary school parties and letters from my 4th grade classmates when I was in the hospital. I’m still really good friends with many of these classmates.

My mother sometimes talks of selling this old house. It needs work and is getting harder for her to maintain. It sits on an active earthquake fault which, over time, has caused shifting and cracking in the walls, allowing in the occasional bull snake. And there is a constant parade of field mice. (So maybe we do have a jungle room like The King…?) Even so, it will be a strange and sad day when we can no longer come back here to re-group, relax and reminisce. There is something comforting about sleeping in your own bed.