JANUARY 20, 2023 – When I was a kid, I couldn’t bear being inside on a nice day, especially in the summer. That was half the reason I hated the violin. Whether Mother was nagging me to practice or Dad was dragging me to a Saturday lesson, I couldn’t stand being indoors when I could be outside riding my bike, chasing around the neighborhood or fighting imaginary Civil War battles in the backyard.
As I said, my penchant for fresh air was only half the reason I hated the violin. The other half was . . . having to practice. (Violin) case in point: even on rainy days, I’d seize on any available diversion to avoid or defer practicing. My principal go-to distraction was browsing through books in the floor-to-ceiling shelving in the den. The main draw was Dad’s extensive collection of American Heritage publications, which were well-illustrated, and, as I discovered by my pre-teen years, filled with interesting captions and side-bar stories. Occasionally, however, I’d venture away from the American Heritage section to other parts of the eclectic library assembled by my parents—art, history, art history, music, novels, poetry, technical books, and an old but good, ponderous edition of Encyclopedia Britannica.
Although I didn’t appreciate the topical organization of the library, both rhyme (in the case of poetry, for example) and reason (mathematics being another category) generally influenced placement of the books.
Once when I was particularly bored and no one was home, I had the bright idea of re-organizing books according to height, width, and color of the spine. When Mother returned from a morning-long absence, I eagerly showed her the result of my efforts. To her credit, rather than throw a fit (or ask if I’d practiced my violin), she pulled out a single volume from the “brown” section and said, “You might not want to include this where it’s most visible to someone entering the room.” The title: Talks on Manure.
I know nothing about the provenance of that book. Perhaps it was a textbook from an elective course in agriculture that one of my parents had taken in college—or a book left behind by a university student who’d rented a room from my grandparents in their rambling house near the U of MN campus. Or maybe—even most likely—it was a joke birthday gift to Dad from Fred Moore, our prankish neighbor across the street. In any event, when Mother called my attention to the subject matter of cow chips and horse apples, I instantly understood her objection, and though the book sported an attractive binding, I readily acquiesced in her unilateral relegation of the handsome volume to relative obscurity on a lower shelf.
In the land of unintended consequences, my little “art project”—my reorganization of books based on physical traits, not subject matter—prompted Mother to re-think and refine the original topical organizational theme. The changes endured for subsequent decades. Throughout that time, however, the American Heritage section retained its original pre-eminence, and Encyclopedia Britannica, too dark, heavy and voluminous to be moved, held its own as a monument fixe.
(Remember to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.)
© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
