The Adventure of Books

As a young boy he spent many hours in his Grandmothers Attic. Since he always stayed during the summer breaks from school, and the house was in the heart of Florida, the attic was always hot. It wasn’t a punishment. It was an adventure.

The house set back on a large lot that sat on a corner. The downstairs rooms were filled with furniture from a time when things were abundant with decorative flourishes. There were tables with fancy carved legs that ended with clawed feet. The claws wrapped around small wheels that were shaped like balls. The main focus of the room was a brilliantly embroidered, floral print couch with three humps on the back. To the boy, it looked like a deformed camel that wandered out of a garden. The cushions were stiff, but he was never allowed to sit on it. He wasn’t allowed to sit on most of the fancy chairs in the living room. That was her room and was used for entertaining her friends.

His room was the attic. 

The attic was long and narrow with a steeply pitched ceiling that rose from low walls. At one end was a tall, narrow window that looked out over the front lawn. That window was always blocked by the items stacked in front of it: his Grandmothers art supplies; easels, boxes of oil paints, framed canvases both blank and painted with scenes of Florida. There were also several old, well worn, musty suitcases sitting in the pile. Other boxes, equally old, and well worn, filled any empty spaces.

At the other end of the attic, steep stairs headed down to the fancy rooms. At the top of the stairs was another tall, narrow window. This over looked a metal roof. The roof ended with a view that was blocked by trees, large palmetto bushes, and one massive Elephant ear plant. Sometimes he would open this window and sit, half inside, half outside, and watch the squirrels and birds.

There was another window in the middle of the room but it had been fitted with a massive exhaust fan. The fan filled the window with a three foot wide blade that turned slowly by a rubber fan belt that always wobbled when it was on. The fan was usually on, drawing in the stale air from the ground floor and blowing out into the Florida heat. Sometimes, at night, he would reverse the fan so it drew in the fresh, night air.

Between the two windows lived random chairs, book cases, and a single bed. There was nothing fancy in the attic. The book cases were filled with old books. Stacks of National Geographic magazines were scattered about the room. The yellow covers, bright against the rest of the room, beckoned to learn of adventures buried within their pages. He spent many an hour visiting the far flung places they described.

It was one book in particularly that really caught his imagination. The cover was a nondescript medium gray, and felt like a course fabric. There were no words on the slightly frayed cover, only two small, stylized birds on the lower right corner. The were embossed in gold. The book was twice as wide as it was high. It took both hands to hold it open.

The inside of the book was equally deficient of words. Black and white photos spanned both pages. Brief, tiny type at the bottom of the page had a description of the scenes shown. The photos showed amazing landscapes that could never be found in the flat lands of Florida: Ragged mountain peaks, snowy rolling valleys, craggy bays filled with boats and quaint villages. At the time, it was a world he could not have imagined.

He would curl up with this book, take his toy cars and pretend he was driving though the fantastic scenes in the book. He would drive through quaint villages, stop at a rushing mountain stream for a picnic, climb the steep mountains until he stood in the clouds, hike across the alpine meadows, and explore every nook and cranny of the craggy bays. Every photo held a multitude of adventures.

This book still lives with me. While I haven’t thought of it in many years, for some reason, the GBE topic of "What book that you've read was life changing?" made me think of this book and all the memories it evoked. I don’t know that it was a “life changing” book, but I’m pretty sure this is where my wanderlust was born.

It was published in 1949. The title is “Der Ligger Et Land-Norway from Above”. According to google it translates as “There lies a country”

I’m sure it was something my Grandmother picked up in her many travels.

Have any books affected your life?