library

I miss going to the library.  As I write this I have just purchased a book from Amazon that was delivered wirelessly to the kindle on my phone.  It is crazily convenient and affordable.  I would always go to the library back home with my grandfather when I was a child.  My grandmother never wanted to go.  She was an avid reader but would just tell Popaw to get her afew mystery novels.  It would turn out she had already read half of the ones he would bring back, but even this never coaxed her out for the trip, so it was always just us guys.  Popaw would never take the interstate even though it would get us to the library ten minutes sooner.  He would take what was called old Carrolton road.  "Why would I want to go way up there?" he would ask as we drove under the interstate bridge.  We would always ride with the windows down with the smell of the deep woods and the dusty smell of the road rolling in.  Popaw would dip snuff and lift the pointer finger of his left hand from the steering wheel to greet every car that passed us going in the opposite direction.  He would go too fast over bumps in the road to send us reeling and I would laugh as I looked over to his dark smiling eyes and bushy black beard.  Then of course there were the books to search through when we arrived.  It was an infinite number to my young eyes.  I would follow behind him while he loaded his arms with mystery novels for his wife and war histories for himself.  I would never want to go to the children's section, but would instead check out an armload of books too advanced for me, but Popaw let me do as I liked.  Popaw and I never did talk much but it was one of those situations where you didn't have to.  There was truly nothing that we had to say.  We understood each other without words.  I wonder if he ever imagined that one day I would be a grown man thinking of him every time I buy a  book with one click of a button from my office, and I wonder if he knows that I would trade that convenience in order to once again climb up into the seat of his old blue ford escort to head down to the library to go reeling and laughing down the dusty road.  I hope that he knows that the feeling of safety and joy that I had in his presence gives me a model to begin to understand what it must feel like to be in heaven, and makes me wish that feeling for others.  Its funny that life can attach so much to the click of a button. 

Pr. Phil