Another Day in the Country
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© Another Day in the Country
A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to some of the people in my life about the books they were reading.
In some ways, it seemed to be a strange topic for a column that shares mainly nostalgia about life in the country.
It seems logical that the topic of country living most likely would be about being outdoors — in the countryside; walking the streets of a small town; riding down dirt roads; enjoying the stillness of a wide, never-ending field of pasture grass; smelling the fragrance of fresh cut hay or the stench of a corral full of cattle or the sweetness of leather in a tack room — and not about reading books.
Country life also is about being indoors — in an old farm house that’s sheltered a family, with a worn kitchen table and uneven floors that probably creak, the smell of chicken frying in my Gramm’s kitchen, the sound of relatives laughing and telling stories in the living room, locusts buzzing on a hot summer evening, and fireflies in the grass.
Books, libraries, and book clubs are city things, it’s always seemed to me, along with shopping malls, restaurants, sirens wailing, cars honking, and crowded traffic.
Country life is more about meadowlarks on fence posts, singing their heart out, while fence wires hang crooked and broken along ditches crowded with shades of tall grass from green to golden, long stems bearing seed pods destined to blow in the ever-present wind that springs up unbidden on the prairie, along with the rain clouds that gather unpredictably, coming out of nowhere to dump a fury of water on some isolated field and then be gone.
Perhaps some folks hunger for the clamor and noise of city life, the bright lights, the convenience of everything that one could imagine being available, all packed into a few square blocks. Things could be delivered to your doorstep with a few clicks on your cell phone, or you could be delivered there, as if to another world, in just a few minutes — instant gratification, endless possibilities, all within walking distance or summoned at will to come to you.
Country dwellers know that whether it’s achieving company or groceries, meeting appointments or just friends, it all takes time and planning.
There’s not much next door or down the block in the country. Bridging worlds apart is always a commute, and a storm of wind, water, ice, or snow can suddenly make everything unavailable. Then, you’re snowed in, locked away, isolated, alone.
Books are my entertainment when a theater is an hour or more away.
Books put me to sleep when the house is too quiet.
Books are good friends, my companions, when my soul yearns for a kindred spirit. They are inspiration when my cup seems empty, and in their pages — even when I’m listening to someone else read the book — I find comfort.
Books teach me things that I could probably learn in a workshop, a college classroom, or at a family reunion.
But, when those things aren’t readily available, when the ancestors can no longer tell their stories and historians are silent, a book, with magical reliability, can reveal, delight, explain, teach, and entertain.
We learn about ourselves inside the fiction that another human being creates. Isn’t that just miraculous?
I asked my cousin Keith, who grew up in Ramona but has lived most of his life in Colorado, about what books he’s been reading.
He and I share a love of books. He sometimes brings them to me in the country, and I’ve sometimes perused the aisles of bookstores in the city with him.
It’s a lot of fun. In a bookstore, we are like two kids in a candy store.
His answer came to me in a letter, handwritten on some old Christmas stationary, five pages long.
“You asked about books,” he wrote, “and I knew that you liked to receive letters, so I’m writing to you.”
I don’t know what was more precious — the book reviews, the handwritten letter, or the funny stationary he was writing on. I knew he didn’t do this often.
Keith loves history. He caught the reading bug from his mother, Gertie Schubert, infamous third grade teacher of so many Marion County kids who now have kids and grandkids of their own.
Keith said he was reading Erik Larson’s book, “The Demon of Unrest,” about the period between Abraham Lincoln’s election and the beginning of the Civil War.
“It’s very eye-opening,” Keith wrote, “considering how divided our country was and how it is divided today — although then, it was about slavery.”
I stopped and considered the divisiveness in our country now. Could it still be part and parcel of that same issue? Hmm.
When I’d asked my friends and family members about books they’d been reading, I wanted to ask them deeper questions, like what they’d learned about themselves recently.
That’s a conversation, however, that most easily happens in a quiet place, later on a summer evening, sitting on the front porch of an old home, when the locusts are singing so loud that you have to wait a while for the answer, and the train goes by and you might as well stop talking because you can barely hear yourself think.
Yet, you’re willing to wait for that answer because time moves slower on a day in the country, and the train, like the day, will soon be gone.