Security Blanket

Here is the prompt for the day from that WordPress 365 Days of Prompts article.
Memories for sale
On a weekend road trip, far away from home, you stumble upon a garage sale in a neighborhood you’re passing through. Astonished, you find an object among the belongings for sale that you recognize. Tell us about it.

I approach this writing prompt a little bit sideways.  The trip was not a weekend trip.  The town was not somewhere I was passing through. But once a long time ago I did find an object that I knew was far out of place had almost no meaning to anyone where I, anyone except for me.

I came to Michigan in 1974.  I hated the place.  My plan was to leave as soon as possible.  I was lonely.  As the academic year dragged on I was cold, very cold. I was homesick.

In 1974, you could not listen to your hometown radio stations over the internet.  Now when I need a dose of the Delaware Valley and its accent I pull up WXPN on Aha.  In that year, you could not email someone to tell them about what had happened in class that had frightened you, or challenged you, or left you puzzled.  If your wanted to talk about it in some detail with somebody who knew you, and not somebody you just met and let us face it everyone was someone I had just met, you had two choices. First there was the long-distance phone call and even after 10 the rates hurt.  Second was a letter.  Find an envelope and paper.  Write out legibly, always a challenge for me, your thoughts.  Borrow a stamp.  Go to the post box and drop it in.  Wait five days or six and see if the recipient wrote you back and if they even deigned to respond to what was on your mind.

Once I was six hundred miles away from home I was on you own in a culture and climate that was foreign and new.  Words didn’t have the same meanings.  Customs were not the same.  There were times when I just longed for some kind of connection with the life I used to know.

My main hobbies in the Godforsaken place I had come to were reading and shopping for LPs.  The key here was shopping not necessarily buying. Money was always tight.  Going to the used record stores to peruse the bins to see if some odd artist I had just gotten interested in could be found there on the cheap, was an afternoon’s outing. Ah the smell of vinyl in the afternoon of a Saturday.

Occasionally I would wander into other stores.  There were hippie places with bedspreads of many colors and incense of many smells.  There were real honest to God local bookstores with the newest volumes.  There were clothing stores with fashion but I did not tarry long there. Jeans and a flannel shirt, that was all I needed.  It was all anyone male or female needed in the mid-1970s.

One October afternoon I wandered into a used book store.  It had books crammed in floor to ceiling and had the smell of mold and must.  That afternoon I found myself looking in the history section. There I came upon a book that could only have come from my hometown, well at least my county.

In 1960-something New Jersey had celebrated it tercentenary.  In North American terms that was damn old. Tons of celebratory stuff marked with this weird logo were hawked.  I think we had purchased a number of anniversary bottles of brown glass blown in observance of the fete. 

My county wanted in on the 300^th birthday party so they published a book called Fenwick’s Colony. It contained photos of ancient houses and people doing business in the contemporary environment.  There were pictures of all the towns in the county.

I knew the book well.  I knew that my house was in picture in the center of the volume.  Having pulled the book from the shelves I open it and looked at my home as it looked a decade before.  I flipped through the pages and there were pictures of people I knew and knew well.  Babe Huber was there as was Mr. Sparks and others. 

Flipping to the inside front cover I found a note gifting the book from one person I knew to another I knew of.  How this book had come 600 miles to a used book store was a mystery to me.  In reality it was probably bought at an estate sale and then shuffled around between book dealers until it came to rest in the middle of the Midwest.

However, the book found its way here didn’t matter.  Every page printed in faux sepia tones was something that was a connection with home.  I don’t know what the price was but I bought the damn thing at once.  I still have the volume although it appears my wife has put it in a box somewhere during a recent cleaning of the bookshelves. 

The book was something that was “of home.”  It reminded me of the place that had defined me.  Those pages were a connection to everything environmentally that had formed me.  It was a printed security blanket and I was damn glad to have it.