Monday, August 12, 2013

Cather Treasure

     Saturday mornings are usually spent performing necessary chores like laundry, house cleaning, yard upkeep and sometimes do-ahead cooking/baking for the upcoming week. I enjoy being at home even with these demands on my time,and totally disdain Saturday shopping, except for an early morning visit to the Farmer's Market in summertime. However, yesterday we did a different sort of shopping - an estate sale a few blocks from home. It is interesting (and tragic) to peruse the remnants of a few decades of an unknown person's life, in this case a recently deceased elderly gentleman named Joseph. Most of the items were overpriced or unneeded, but the fellow must have been a voracious reader because he left hundreds of volumes in his library and I did snap up two lovely books - hardback compilations of novels by a favorite author, Willa Cather.     
      So now I am engrossed in rereading these quintessential American stories and loving every one, even My Antonia, which I know backwards and forwards (for an advanced composition class in college, I researched  the novel and the author to write a lengthy literary theme paper.)



   On the inside cover of each of these books, I discovered a handwritten inscription to Joseph and I wish I could tell him that his books have a good home.

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