Bookshelf Porn

I am sitting at my desk here in the office on Burnside, and looking at bookshelf porn.  That is what the site calls itself, and it is gorgeous and evocative and appealing to a booklover such as myself.  And it brought to mind a memory -- not a long-forgotten one, really, since I have always held it in my mind, but I haven't stopped and thought about it for quite a while.

It was when I was staying with the McKnights for a week.  I don't remember where my parents were -- I think they were couselling at the church camp, where Sarah, my older sister, was camping, for a week, and their three younger daughters had to be accomodated elsewhere.  Sarah was old enough to camp -- to be a Camper! -- but even though I was just a year younger, I was not.  This was very sad and disappointing.  My parents promised that next year, I would get to go, too, but next year came and went, and although I have camped many times, I never managed to be a Camper!  In a Cabin!  With other girls who were also Campers!  Hard to imagine that appealing, but it did.

The McKnights were a couple in our church with a small (spoiled and bratty) boy, David, and an odd propensity for moving a lot.  They lived in three places that I can remember, and I know they moved out of the third one, the one they called the Birdhouse House, even though I cannot remember where they went from there.  Not so called because it had birdhouses, either, but because it was an "old Portland" style home -- the third floor was one large room with a big dormer window at floor level looking in each direction.  And they called that big room, "the birdhouse."

Anyway, I was staying with them, I think I was seven or eight, and I was very, very homesick.  I was with Mrs. McKnight (Sue) all day, helping her amuse David, and do the grocery shopping and so on, and then trying to be polite and friendly with Mr. McKnight (Bob) in the evening.  He was the type who is known as a Big Tease.  A Card.  The Life of the Party.  A Jokester.   I hated him.  He made me so uncomfortable.  I was never sure of the right way to respond.  Trying to tease back grown-ups who were teasing me had backfired in my face more than once.  But if I behaved as though they were serious, then I was an idiot.  Then I was "such a sober little thing!"

At that time, they were staying in a big white house on a college campus.  Bob McKnight was the caretaker, and the house came with the job.  I don't remember where he was fulfilling this role -- Western Seminary, possibly?  Maybe even Warner Pacific, which would be funny, since I ended up both attending church, and then later, working for Warner.  But some Christian college on the side of a hill in Portland.  Anyway.  Big white house with three levels, and pocket doors between the dining room and what was probably the library or the family room, but was the room where I slept, while I was there.  On a fold-out couch.

It was sunny, most of the week I was there, but on one day, maybe Thursday, it rained.  And that is how the fabulous thing about the house came to my attention.  It rained, and this worried Mrs. McKnight.  How was little Bethie going to amuse herself, if it was raining?  Not realizing that I hadn't been playing outside at all so far.  So she said to me, "Do you want to color?  I have some crayons, and I know we have coloring books somewhere."   I did not comment on the whole coloring book thing, but asked, wistfully,  " Do you think you have any reading books?"  She looked worried for a minute, but then brightened up.  "I think there are some children's books in the basement!"  she said.  "In a grocery bag.  Why don't you go down there and see?"

She showed me where the basement stairs were, and pointed in the direction of the bag of books.  I made my way over there.  The basement was not dark, because there was a glass door opening out of one corner, onto a lower part of the hill, with a small terrace made of reddish brick in front of the door.  Right outside the door, to the right of the brick, was a tree, right now dripping away onto the little sqare terrace.  So that grey-sky-backed diffused light was pouring in and illuminating that corner of the basement, which was, in general, filled to the roof with things like piles of sports equipment, and racks of folding chairs and stacks of folding tables, and bins of pennants and ropes and all kinds of things which a college campus would need to store somewhere.

I found the bag of books and dug in.  Most of what it contained I don't remember, but I do remember two.  One was a very beautifully illustrated edition of  "Johnny Crow's Garden."  It had a battered red cover, with a picture inset in the middle, of a crow holding a watering pot in its foot, looking over a hedge at a lion.  I read that one many times, and still never got it, but also never lost the feeling it always gave me, that maybe this time I would.  And the other one was Little Women.  I had heard of this book, people in other books had mentioned it, and other real live people had mentioned it, so I just knew of it.  I looked round for a place to sit and read these treasures.  A few feet away were two large gunny sacks, one half empty but very firmly packed with whatever it contained and the other about three-quarters full.  I investigated.  The firmly packed half-full one, which was just the right size and shape to make a comfortable reading perch, contained hot chocolate mix, which had been opened and used long enough ago that the remaining powder had hardened into a solid lump, which, as it was warmed by my fat little rear end, gave off a lovely and comforting smell of chocolate.  The other bag, which had been opened at the same time, was full of stale and stiffened marshmallows. 

Oh, my.

How better to evoke bliss?  If I had had a mug of hot, sweet tea, I might have been slightly better off, but the gorgeous rain in front of me, the comfortable seat, smelling of cakes and brownies in the oven, the sound of footsteps on the boards overhead, the fifty pounds or so of stale marshmallows at my right hand, and the Book in my lap --?  Sheer bliss.  Perfection.

The rest of that week was a thing of beauty and a joy forever.  I would wait until Mrs. McKnight was out of the kitchen and then I would hurry down the basement stairs and settle onto my Chocolate Chair.  I would hear David's running feet, as he barreled around the house calling my name and whining to his mother, "I can't find her!" 

"It's okay, honey," his mother would reply, cooingly.  "Maybe she just doesn't want to play with you right now." 

Damn right, I didn't.    And I popped another stale marshmallow into my mouth and turned the page.  Even on sunny days, it was cool in the basement, and the tree outside the door proved to be a pear tree with smooth pinky-golden pears on it.  I got sticky to my elbows with that suculent, faintly gritty fruit.  No one ever knew I was down there, or if they did, they kept it to themselves, and the rest of my week was spent in sweet, chocolate-flavored peace, in that perfect little reading nook.  Better than any of the Bookshelf Porn pictures I have just been looking at.

And I have always preferred my marshmallows stale, ever since.