Another World

My parents owned, and still own, a massive library of books. They span through all different genres of fiction and non-fiction. There are plays, out of print picture books hanging together by the threads running through their broken binding. and encyclopedia's printed before Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon. Kids, an encyclopedia is something people used to use for book reports before you could use the internet. They were expensive, beautiful, and out of date almost the instant they were printed. The section about space said something along the lines of, "little is known about the great vast expanse." It was hilariously out of date.

Despite being so out of date, they showed Tazmanian Tigers as being endangered instead of extinct, I still loved them. They had beautiful paintings throughout the books, instead of color photographs. Color photographs existed back then, they just weren't used in the encyclopedia. It probably had to do with the cost...or communism. Yeah, I'm gonna blame communism.

I adored the painting in those encyclopedia's. The book covering the letter A and D were the ones I pulled out the most. D-for dog breeds and A-for animals. Golf on television could put me right to sleep, but I could pour over the names of mammals in Australia or memorize the names of different terrier breeds for hours. Not that we would have watched golf at our house. We weren't really into sports.

I would lie on my stomach and pour over the detail in those pictures as I learned the names of different creatures. The beauty in those paintings captured my attention more than any photograph ever could. They transported me and pulled me in.

One person might have seen those old encyclopedia's as irrelevant. After all, it was hard to write book reports using information that might not be correct anymore. On the other hand, it also had a timeless quality to it. It's funny how certain things draw us in.

Was there anything from your childhood that transported you to another world or that you adored? Perhaps it was an instrument, an old baseball glove, a globe, or a journal? I'd love to hear what caught your attention. Is it something that still interests you today?