Caffeinated Politics

The old man in Maine looked like he had more local wisdom than anyone around, so I asked if he had lived there all his life. “Not yet,” he said while grinning back at me.  The best folks to talk with when traveling are the ones with weathered faces and eyes that link with yours: an open invitation to talk. He came to mind as a woman was walking through our home, coming upon another set of bookcases, and asked if I had read them all. “Not yet.”  The line from the old lobsterman will never be forgotten.

Some of the best conversations are the ones we do not plan but just stumble upon as they start a nice journey. Earlier this summer, I was on our front lawn talking with a La Fête De Marquette festivalgoer who was in our neighborhood. He commented on our flowers and the look of our home. Soon, he found himself in a chair looking out at the lake. (One does not need to say anything flattering to get offered a chair, but it helps.) Introductions were made, and I discovered he teaches (of all things) history to high school students in northern Wisconsin. From there, we took off on a series of topics, including him landing on Joseph Ellis, a noted historian of the Founding Fathers’ generation. I spoke of my high regard for his research and strong narratives, which led him to ask if I had read the work of Page Smith, who “dives inside each kernel of corn” from that period of history. I had not. But I knew where to find his books. (That conversation was the best of the summer, as it took me off on a wonderful journey from the colonies in North America back to the 1600s and a dive into English history. This week, I am up to the point where King James has died, and the last love letter he wrote to Buckingham was received.)

I guess growing up in a rural community with older relatives as neighbors, I was accustomed to being self-reliant about finding amusements and pastimes. Reading was something I found easy to learn as a young boy, and soon thereafter, I discovered books to be highly enjoyable. There was something else I discovered most enjoyable in those years. Being in the country and not having someone to talk to all the time meant that when cars stopped in our driveway, such as the annual summer visit by the Fuller Brush man, I had my chance to banter and banter. My Mom did not come outside during such visits, which I now understand as an adult, as she did not want to buy something but did not know how best to politely make that point. She was born in the South but had Midwestern sensibilities. I was not sure why he always left me with a new cucumber brush just for chatting, but over time, those types of interactions left an impression that conversations were the easiest thing in life to undertake. What we needed, I concluded as a child, was more folks stopping to visit!

That simple act of being open to conversation is something clear to folks who walk along our corner of the Madison isthmus. This summer, James and I heard that we were referred to by some college-age guys who moved into a rental unit as being “two old, helpful and friendly guys on the corner”. Helpful and friendly…well, yes. We have been called the ‘ambassadors to the neighborhood,’ but “old” is not a term I recognize.

After the teacher had left the front lawn, headed to the festival, I went inside our home to a bookshelf, and there each of the eight volumes of Page Smith was lined up. I pulled A New Age Now Begins and took it to a reading nook to pick up where the earlier conversation had left off. (As I write, I am up to Part 2, and thrilled by the dissection, layer by layer, of the founding generation.)  I could write about a longtime interest in better understanding how historians write to persuade readers, whether the revolutionary spirit in the colonial days was created top-down or bottom-up, or about the lengthy process of how English subjects came to think of themselves as Americans.  But they are not the themes here. Rather, the purpose of this writing is about the simple pleasures to be found in life, the true riches of life that have long anchored me.

One of the ways I measure being rich is the ability to have a whim or desire about a book or topic and be able to reach for a corresponding volume on my shelves. While I always had plenty of books to read as a child, we did not have many bookshelves. I placed my books in piles on the top of my bedroom closet. One of my teenage dreams was to have bookshelves loaded with the ones that had given me so much pleasure and the scores of others that promised the same. After leaving home, I found the entire Advise and Consent series by Allen Drury and bought the hardcover editions.  I read them while in high school through our public library, loving the political epics, and wanted them around me. That was the start of my entry into adulthood with a Shopko shelving product that met my income. Today, James and I place our books on the built-in bookshelves that we had constructed in 2019. But the old books smell just as wonderful as they did when I was 25!

I noted the Page Smith books were bought for $3.00 each, and I recall they were sold from a State Street bookstore near the UW. I was parked in the Lake Street parking ramp and lugged the hardcover books, each averaging nine hundred pages, to the car. Over the decades of my life, I have spent more time reading than any other pastime. I am always on the lookout for books that match the range of my curiosities, with history books dominating my purchases and shelf space. Since the pandemic, I have branched out widely with my fiction reading. James even took my growing list of authors and book series and made a small printed list folded for my leather key and credit card holder. (I have not used cash for so long; I do not carry a wallet anymore.) 

Book-related gifts are always a treasure and a treat, and this year, for my birthday, James bought what every book fan needs. A custom embosser. I have taken to working my way through the shelves on each floor of our home and pressing ‘my mark’ on a page near the start of the book. For book lovers, we know this is just another reason to sniff an old book!

Yes, there are many examples of being truly rich, and they can be found in each day of life.

Originally posted September 20, 2024