Reading Frenzy!

When I was a student back in the late 1950s, my archaeology class surveyed two identical Indians mounds out on an island in the Gulf of Mexico.

I forget the official name of the site, but we called the twin mounds "Sandy’s Nipples" in honor of a young lady in the class. The accolade pleased her.

The island was accessible only by boat.

On one trip to the island we saw a commotion in the water.

Splashing, blood spraying, violent turmoil.

Drawing closer, we saw a pack of sharks attacking a giant sea turtle. They’d already bitten off a flipper or two, yet the turtle, bigger than a table top, attempted to escape by struggling on the surface and actually trying to jump from the water.

Each shark viciously grabbed a bite, thrashed around to tear off a chunk of bloody meat, and fled with it to keep brother sharks from snatching it away. Gulping down the meat, the shark would flip around for another bite. It looked as though dozens of sharks engaged in this feeding frenzy.

What calls this vivid gory memory to mind this morning?

Well, Sunday afternoon Ginny and I attended the annual Friends of the Library Book Sale at the fairgrounds.

There, over a hundred thousand books, culled or donated to Jacksonville libraries, are stacked on hundreds of long tables for buyers to purchase at $10 or less each.

A vast warehouse stuffed with every kind of book, books lying peacefully, tranquilly on long tables. Books filling boxes under the tables, not bothering anybody.

Then here come the buyers!

Hundreds, if not thousands, of readers of every size and description cruised the tables grabbing treasured books, clutching them close to their breasts, packing them in boxes. Grabbing armloads. Filling shopping carts especially stolen from grocery stores for the sale.

Ginny & I separated to cover more ground. When we met by chance in the G section, we each looked as though we just played three quarters of NFL Football on a rainy field.

I made three trips out to stack books in the trunk of our car when my canvas bag overflowed. Ginny made two trips out. We had to break off to replenish our cash at an ATM then back into the fray.

Spending money we don’t have for books we don’t need and books we’re unlikely to ever read. But we couldn’t stop.

Materialism run rampant.

But we got books.

Great books.

There was blood in the water.

Books to be had for the grabbing.

Yes, hundreds of other readers crawled under tables and elbowed eachother aside for another bite at the turtle.

But we got ours!

We got a carload.

I got books on archaeology and history and old diaries and journals and travel and....

They are MINE! All mine. My very own. My books. Mine! Mine. Mine.

I’ll rip down our old bookshelves and build new bookshelves then sit back and relax and say to my soul, “John, eat, drink and read, for thou hast much books”.

So we came home replete, happy and exhausted.

Then guess what we did all evening?

We watched tv.