The Tale of the Tome

I buy most of my paperback novels at flea markets, yard sales and charity book sales, because they’ve just become too expensive to purchase new. The other day I picked one up to read, The Lions of Lucerne by Brad Thor, a thriller I got at a yard sale. As I was flipping through it I saw something between the pages that turned out to be the receipt from when the book was initially purchased. This copy of The Lions of Lucerne was bought at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport in November of 2002. This got me to wondering who bought it and how did it end up at a yard sale in York County Pennsylvania:

Milton Prube was bored as his flight home was delayed for 3 hours so he took a walk through the book store in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport hoping to find a distraction. He settled on a paperback novel called The Lions of Lucerne. He sat down and started to read, but he hadn’t gotten far when there was a commotion across the room. Milton joined dozens of others at the window to watch a cage carrying circus monkeys break open and send the creatures running in every direction.

As Milton pressed his face flat against the glass saying “Look at the pretty monkeys. I’ll name that one Larry and that one Ferdinand and that one Pippi and that one Milli Vanilli and that one Uncle Flopper and that one Big Steve . . .” Darren Czak stole the book. Tall and blond with movie star good looks, Darren was also a kleptomaniac. Before taking the book he had stolen gummi bears from a 9 year old girl, shoelaces from a 93 year old army veteran and a roll of toilet paper form the men’s room. Darren strolled happily past gate 38 where he tried to pick pocket former Canadian football star Alfonse Verlieu. At 6’4” and 320 pounds, Alfonse was not amused. He chased Darren through the airport shouting very nasty things in French that all sounded like “Ooh la la.” As Darren turned a corner, the book slipped from his jacket pocket.

The Lions of Lucerne was found by security guard Lonny St. Marchand who started reading it on his break. Lonny couldn’t put the book down and missed going back on the clock so he got fired. With a lot of free time he started a Lions of Lucerne fan club, passing the book around to all his friends and family. Unfortunately after 4 years of hearing about the book Lonny’s wife Charlene packed it up with a dozen other paperback novels and a jar of mango/ghost chili tapenade to send to her cousin Felicia in Lancaster Pennsylvania.

Felicia Schussler is a housewife who loves to read but she believed by the title that the book was about actual lions and she’s not a fan of any cat larger than an ocelot. Felicia gave the book to her friend Marsha Twip. Marsha read it, enjoyed it, and informed Felicia that it was not about lions after all, but Felicia was already involved in a 12 book series on the life of Terky Tuttle, the first astronaut from Guam. Felicia instead gave it to a local second-hand store in exchange for a box of safety pins.

The owner of the second-hand store, Hank’s Junk and Stuff, was Desmond Tuttle-Smythe, a British transplant to the United States. He read ten pages of the book and hated it calling it “bloody fogmagog”. Desmond sold the book for 25 cents to Janet Bandicoot, a registered nurse and part time sky diver from my hometown. Janet read the book and thought it was ok. She slid it onto a shelf where it was forgotten for nearly four years until the family decided to have a yard sale.

I don’t know if this is really how it all happened but I’d like to think there is a monkey named Milli Vanilli running around the Dallas-Fort Worth airport.

Christmas in July

A friend gave me these two books recently that she found at a relative’s yard sale. To say I was happy is an understatement along the lines of saying most politicians are a little corrupt. I have collected Peanuts memorabilia since I was 6 or 7 years old. I wish I still had all the things I had as a kid but much of it was thrown out or broken or misplaced over the years and many moves. The one thing I still have is my collection of several dozen of these paperback books. They were published by Fawcett and were reprints of daily and Sunday strips that had already been collected in larger, more expensive books. This was a budget alternative to have all the Peanuts strips in your possession. They collected all the daily strips from 1952-1988 when publishing was stopped.

One of my fondest childhood memories is after church on Sunday afternoon, my mom and sister and I going to the Bookland on Edgar Street in York to look around. My first stop was the humor section to look for a new Peanuts collection. If all they had were old ones I was palpably disappointed. If there was a new one I didn’t have it was like Christmas morning. If we hadn’t been there in a while and there were 2 new books, I became Homer Simpson drooling over a box of donuts.

The rest of my Sunday afternoon would be spent on the floor reading through the cartoon strips contained in the books. They didn’t take long to go through so I would re-read them several times until my favorites were memorized.

Back to the books my friend gave me. I took them home figuring I already had them in my collection. I certainly don’t have all the volumes that were published but I have several dozen. What were the odds she had found one or two I didn’t have? So I took them over to the book shelf that holds my treasured Peanuts books. One by one I went through my titles. When I was done I had 2 brand new books to read. I didn’t have either one in my collection. It was Christmas morning on a July afternoon and my cat wanted to know why I was so excited about something that clearly had nothing to do with her.

People ask me why I like Peanuts and there are several reasons. First and foremost they make me laugh. I know not everyone thinks they’re funny but they consistently give me at least a chuckle. Being a writer myself I am in awe of Charles Schulz’s use of language and loving words I was always excited to learn a new one. I still remember learning the word perspicacity from Linus when talking about his teacher.

Everyone can relate to Snoopy and his cool demeanor. His ability to morph into anything from a World War I flying ace to a vulture sitting in a tree would make any kid jealous. It works on adults too who have boring jobs and need to pretend to make it through the day. But one of the big reasons I love the Peanuts is I can relate to Charlie Brown. I’m wishy-washy just like him, loved sports but wasn’t that good at them like Charlie and as a kid nothing ever seemed to go right for me. Now that I’m older and my hairline has receded and my bald spot grows exponentially larger every day I’m starting to resemble Charlie Brown as well.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to lie on the couch and read my books.

Really Getting to Know Your Friends

By now we’ve all received an email at least once titled something like “Get to Know Your Friends”. You’re given a list of 10-30 questions asking you things like ‘what are you wearing right now’, ‘what are you listening to right now’ ‘what is your favorite day of the week’ and ‘where were you born’. These questions are fine, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with them, but they lack the things I want to know about my friends. I’ve written my own list of ‘Get to Know Your Friends’ questions:

1. If you started a rock band, what would its name be?
2. Let’s talk pickles: sliced, spears or whole?
3. What’s the best book you’ve ever read?
4. You’ve been on death row for 13 years. Finally the fateful day has arrived: your execution. What will you order for your last meal?
5. If you were in a sitcom would you be:
a. the plucky single parent
b. the wacky next door neighbor
c. the douchebag ex
d. the annoyingly cute young child
e. the unbelievably stupid best friend
f. other—give a description
6. What song would you like to hear on the radio that you never hear anymore?
7. What’s the worst movie you’ve ever seen?
8. When you’re at work, how much time do you waste each day just staring into space wondering what your life would be like if you won the lottery?
9. It’s 3 a.m. on a Tuesday and an alien invasion begins. The first thing you do is:
a. scream
b. call the police
c. piss your pants
d. shit your pants
e. piss and shit your pants
f. look to the sky and beg the aliens to take you with them
g. lock the door, make something to eat and watch another re-run of Law and Order
10. Close your left eye, put 2 fingers from your right hand on your nose, wave with your left hand and stomp the floor with your right foot. How stupid do you think you look right now?
11. If you founded a country, what would your flag look like?
12. The dead have risen from their graves and are feeding on your neighbors. Do you:
a. scream
b. call the police
c. piss your pants
d. shit your pants
e. piss and shit your pants
f. join in because you enjoy a good nosh
g. start killing zombies like you’re in a video game all the while proclaiming yourself “King Zombie Slayer”
h. start cooking yourself in a garlic sauce to prepare for when they get to your house.
13. What song, book or movie do you love but everyone else seems to hate?
14. Go to the first closed door in your home, open it and describe what you see.
15. If you were a circus freak, what would your abnormality be?

Send this out to exactly 130 of your closest friends. If you only send it to 129, a virus will be released that converts all your documents to Mandarin Chinese characters. If you send it to 131, then may God have mercy on your soul.