SEPTEMBER 20, 2026 – (Cont.) On a gloomy day marked by intermittent rain, I was down at Joslyns’ watching TV. Joslyns lived in a house so big, it seemed, you could wander at will for half an hour and never cross or retrace your path. They had four boys in contrast to my having three sisters, though the oldest Joslyn brother, Mark, was in high school and owned a motorcycle.[1] The other three brothers were much closer to my age, so I hung out with them. We played hard at everything, from . . . baseball in the empty lot farther down our street to . . . re-enactment of World War II battles in Harlan Thurston’s spacious lot next door to the empty lot to . . . racing around the neighborhood on our bikes to . . . engaging in acorn-slingshot wars (late in the summer) to . . . bumper pool up in the spacious party room above the garage of Joslyn’s house to . . . board games in Dave or Jimmy’s bedroom down the hallway from the party room to . . . beating up on Tommy Joslyn, who always seemed to deserve it simply because he was the youngest.
What rendered their house “play central” was not only its size but the fact that their working parents were rarely on hand.
Anyway, on that particular boring summer day, the weather had pre-empted our usual outside activities and we’d exhausted our inside pursuits, as well. Our fallback position, then, was afternoon TV, which suited me fine, since our family didn’t have a TV and pretty much anything the Joslyn boys wanted to watch (on the four channels available back then) would be better than an umpteenth round of bumper pool or another game of Milton Bradley’s Civil War.
So, we all repaired to the spacious TV room on the ground floor[2], where Dave, the oldest, and I, then next oldest, plopped ourselves down on the sofa and Jimmy and Tommy sat on the carpet. Next to my end of the sofa was a short, low-lying non-descript set of shelves; a kind of “toss it over there” furnishing noticeable only if you were looking around to break the boredom of a Wheaties commercial on a gray wet summer afternoon. On the shelves were no more than a dozen limp, lazy books, including a single volume of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books (no jacket) similar to the ones that lined a shelf in the den of our house. Upon seeing this puny collection of books on the poor excuse for a set of two bookshelves, I realized that these were the only books I’d ever seen inside the big house.
During the TV ad, I leaned over to inspect the books more closely and pulled out the Reader’s Digest. When Dave saw me do this, he said with astonishment, “Can you believe how many books we have?”
I was just as surprised—by how few books they had. I felt conflicted: on the one hand, I wanted Dave to know that he was mistaken about the size of his family’s two dinky bookshelves, but on the other hand, I didn’t want him to think I was being snooty. Accordingly, I welcomed resumption of the TV show so the whole matter could dissipate by diversion.
I don’t know what became of Dave—or his brothers, for that matter. But I’m curious. What would Dave have to say about the ocean of books that fill our house today—so many, he’d be well-advised to wear a PFD before entering the house?
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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson
[1] A Bridgestone, I remember. Though he was too old to want to hang out with us, we did see and greet him as he rode up or down their long driveway when we happened to be around. He always waved and was friendly enough in our brief encounters. Also, he didn’t seem to be a wild rider, though he never wore a helmet. I worried, though, that he might have an accident one day. That day came. Dave, Jimmy and Tommy were down at our house, and we were out back taking turns shooting my bow and arrow set (with arrows aimed at a target). Interrupting our fun, my mother called out from the kitchen window. “Mrs. Joslyn is on the phone,” she said. “She needs to talk to Dave.” When Dave reappeared after taking the call, he reported that Mark had been in an accident with his motorcycle. He was going to be okay but had been taken to the hospital. The three brothers then rushed home. The upshot was that at a residential intersection on the other side of town, an older woman had run a stop sign and struck Mark as he was passing through. The collision wrecked his motorcycle and left him with a broken arm. The incident left me with confirmation that motorcycles were inherently dangerous—no matter how careful the rider might be.
[2] The same TV room where our whole family joined the Tobin family, the owners/residents before Joslyns, to watch the JFK funeral.
