Book Sale

Walpole village held its annual book sale this past weekend. When we first moved here some 12 years ago they held this sale in spring. Tables on the sidewalk in front of the library held the books weeded from the collection that year as well as the hodegpodgy assortments that spilled from boxes donated by patrons. I'm sure each box held secret stories of never-read self-improvement books, hobbies begun and cast aside, gifts from from relatives who only consulted their own tastes, and the dusty purchases of impulsive youth. For starters. Just imagine all those stories about unwanted or no longer wanted books.

Well, under the eager and kind management of some of the library's best friends, the sale grew to such proportions that they moved it into the Town Hall years ago and even selected a generally cold and gloomy weekend. The sale thus fills the lull between foliage tourists and Thanksgiving that so bedevils our country calenders with doldrums. The weekend also boasted Halloween, of course, not to mention the beginning of muzzle-loading season, but never mind, this town had its mind on books. Witness the fact that the sale moved this year to the middle school gym and auditorium, the only space in town to accommodate goings on of such magnitude. Our village's once dinky and disorganized but neighborly and charming country book sale now needs a full-fledged parking lot, refreshments, two squads of volunteer teenagers, numerous volunteer pick-up trucks and dozens upon dozens of long tables. But only four cashiers! I am happy to report though that my cashier at least was still totting up my purchase in her head--not a calculator in sight--relying only a little on the fingers of her left hand. After several efforts that arrived within a plus or minus margin of $3 I suggested we round things off in an upwards direction. She looked relieved and a little grateful too.

So was I. Although not one of the books I'd been coveting came to hand, I'd found a few treasures.

Okay, I was coveting a Joy of Cooking (any early edition, just not the most recent) a copy of Thurber's The Thirteen Clocks (inexcusably out of print for the longest time) any old copy of Nevil Shute's A Town Like Alice, and any older editions of Margaret Wise Brown's books, particularly I Went for a Walk in the Forest. Also Happy Winter by Karen Gundersheimer. Both also out of print. We own all the children's books but they are worn out with reading.

My discovered treasures were several small, fit-in-the-hand small cookbooks. This is a style I'm fond of anyway and have collected in an idle sort of way for years. The best of all time in this category is Fish Facts, a tiny compendium of classic preparations sold by just about every fish shop in New England for decades. Each shop had their own name, location and phone number printed prominently on the cover beside drawings or photos of doughty sailors and boats under sail. The copyright is 1938 so it's not surprising to see phone numbers like: Arlington 1127. I also like The Strawberry Cookbook from Coventry CT. Even though it contains no publishing information whatsoever, it covers the territory like no other.

My new addition, The Vermont Beekeeper's Cookbook I found at the bottom of a nearly empty box of cookbooks, disregarded, I bet, because of its small stature. It's full of dainty, black and white block prints and chockablock with honey lore, honey thinking and honey recipes and history. Like I said, a small treasure. I also adopted a book on the history of women in the Middle Ages, a subject of considerable interest to me but not perhaps to everyone's taste. Finally, only because it was the only book left in that box,I picked up a book with the unprepossessing title FOOD by Waverly Root. Waverly Root? I had to see how Mr. Root approached his topic, further described as: An authoritative visual history and dictionary of the foods of the world. As it turns out the key word really is food. You won't find omelette or stew in this book, because he limits himself precisely, thoroughly and I'd have to say with glee to eggs, potatoes, spices of every name and provenance and all the rest. I now know all about cloves and nutmegs, their discovery, how they were hidden and smuggled, how astronomical was their price, how false charts were created and sold by the Portuguese to keep the Dutch and others from finding those few islands where they grew and much much more. The book delights me. Of course it's out of print.

Now I see I've taken a turn that led me away from my chosen topic which was a discourse on hunters in small villages as November gets underway. Six such stood by their pickups alongside the road not far down from our place. They looked oddly apprehensive what with their rifles and their camouflage. Maybe I was projecting my own anxiety but this lot looked green around the ears. I imagined them feeling a bit silly standing about in their outfits on the day of Halloween asking themselves if really and truly they were really going to enter the woods and kill something.

Well, it's too late to write about hunters now. I need to get to my outside chores while the sun's out.