Depression Child

On a recent trip to visit my daughter and her family in Massachusetts, my wife and I stopped at a diner off Route 84, near the Connecticut border. The sign advertised “Food and Books.” The décor was unusual for a restaurant. Every available wall space, from floor to ceiling, was lined with used books. We were told that there were thousands more in the basement if we cared to browse further. Most were of little interest but it was fun checking titles while our dinner was being prepared. I assumed that the owner was running a lending library on the side. Later I learned that the books had been discarded by libraries and that every diner was entitled to leave with three books without charge. That made six books between my wife and me. Now that was of interest! I spent a half hour selecting five volumes and left with a Studs Turkle autobiography, a Philip Wiley novel, a biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald, an account of a schizophrenic breakdown by Kurt Vonnegut’s son,
and Morton Thompson’s Not as a Stranger.
Generally, I can afford to satisfy my literary needs at Barnes and Noble or Amazon.com without compromising the estate that will go to my beneficiaries. Why, then, get excited about a few gratuitous books? My wife wouldn’t touch them for the same reason she pulls the top spread off the bed when we check into a motel. “Who knows who touched it last (or what they did on it?)” My enchantment with bargains, on the other hand, goes back to my earliest years and I offer no apologies.
I was born in 1933 but Black Friday and the Great Depression were more than distant memories to my family. My father was laid off from his sales position in the garment district of New York City. In retrospect it was no catastrophe for our growing family for it motivated him to strikeout for himself as a ladies’ coat and suit manufacturer. The business thrived but the first few years were difficult. Mom skimped to keep the budget balanced and even managed to open a savings account for me at Greenwich Savings Bank, endorsed by the children’s radio personality, Uncle Don. Uncle Don’s career ended calamitously shortly after when someone left his mike open and he proclaimed unknowingly to thousands of adoring juveniles, “Thank God… done with the little bastards until Monday.” Mom bought “plain” milk rather than homogenized because it was two cents cheaper. She skimmed the fat off the top and threw it down the drain. She scolded my father for buying an electric train set for my birthday when I needed a new mackinaw. Yet a new jacket would eventually have become threadbare, like the old one, and by now would be long forgotten. I cherish that locomotive which I resurrected as an adult and still display on my office shelf. I call it my mackinaw train.
I became a compulsive saver and then investor. Ben Franklyn didn’t need to tell me “A penny saved is a penny earned.” I’m not too proud to pick up a copper I find lying in the street. I drive my wife wild turning out lights when the room is empty…sometimes when it is not. I’ll layer myself in wool sweaters before turning up the thermostat in December. I’ll scrape the peanut butter jar spanking clean before discarding it for a replacement Jiffy.
So I’ll read my new acquisitions and display them without shame in my library as if I had purchased them new.