A Box of Books

My father died at 7:30 p.m. on November 8, 1995, in St. Luke’s Hospital, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His funeral was three days later in Amana, Iowa. The next day we drove back to Champaign, Illinois, with a box of books and a box of carpenter’s tools. The books were all written by me. I had given them to my father as gifts, something to show him what I did. He had always been a big fan of reading books; Mark Twain was his favorite. He always turned to my bibliographies and said, “Boy Peanuts, I’m amazed at all these books you’ve read.” He seldom commented on their contents. Each time I published a book I gave him a copy.

The books were prominently displayed in the bookcase (which he had made) above the TV in his living room. As we were leaving, Leslie, my stepmother, said, “These books are yours, take them home. Your father would want you to have them back.”

They filled a box. It was heavy, The books were arranged in no particular order: The Research Act, Sociological Methods, The Mental Patient, The Alcoholic Society, The Recovering Alcoholic, Social Psychology, Social Relationships, Childhood Socialization. I felt at odds, carrying the box out of my father’s house, for they had been my gift to him. It seemed self-centered some how, but also made sense. Why leave them?

This morning the box with the books sits, undisturbed, in the far southwest corner of the downstairs library. It has been there since the spring of 2004 when we moved into this house. Before then, since November 12, 1995, the box sat, undisturbed beneath the lower shelf of books in another lower-level library in our house on Prospect Avenue in Champaign.

I’ve been carrying these books around for 16 years now, and of course, my history with each book extends further back in time, even, in the case of The Mental Patient, before 1966.

Last Christmas I walked by the box on the way to my basement shop. I picked up the top book, Sociological Methods (1970). It fell open to a lined sheet of note paper from a stenographer’s pad, and an undated handwritten letter from my mother,

Hi Loves,

Really thought I was closer to the end

Hot as hell here today—having a drink—just finished

cleaning puppy hairs out of car while George (my step-father)

trimmed the lawn—Happy Mark (my brother) is

through another phase (his Ph.D.)

More next week—

LOVE

Us

Three pages of proof-reading corrections for typos in Sociological Methods followed this letter. The corrections started on page 238, then 244, 265, 272, 273, 274, 275, 285, 286, 336 through 373, then a note, “Through Page 412.” They pick up again on p. 438, and continue through to p. 564.

In bold letters the letter ends:

COMPLETE

Said the Toitle (turtle)

To the hare!! LOVE

I’ve written about my mother. She and George (my stepfather) moved to Champaign from Cotton Wood, Arizona in January of 1988, the year my wife and I married in St. Kitts. When Mother and I fought in the spring of 1991 she and George moved from Champaign, to Lone Tree, Iowa, 6 miles from the house her parents owned which was 8 miles south of Iowa City. They did not say goodbye when they moved away. Dad told us where they were living. In their new home they were not far from my father, who had moved to the Amana Colonies in 1988, about the time mother and George moved to Champaign

Finding Mother’s letter in Dad’s box of books was unsettling. How long had the letter been in that box? Was it there when Dad was alive? It had to have been there when I gave Dad the book. Did he know it was there? Did he read it? Why did he leave it in the book?

He often asked about Mother and George, reporting that Bobbie and Helen Lentz, (cousins of mother) said they had seen them in Iowa City. Did he ask about her because he had a letter from her to me in his living room?

The corrections in the letter are small—misspellings of words like “quantitatively” and “catalogue,” typos, incorrect font size, lower level, not full caps. Beside each entry I had written yes, or no, as if I was having a conversation with Mother, as if she was with me, in my book, as I was putting on the final touches, as if she were sitting on my shoulder.

And as she writes, she tells me things:

Hot as Hell today—As it should be in the Arizona desert.

Having a drink—She was still drinking bourbon with her milk.

George is cleaning puppy hairs out of the car. When did they get a dog!?

Happy Mark is through another phase—Mark, where is Mark today?

More next week, to be continued,

Then the letter ends, after p. 564,

COMPLETE…said the Toitle to the Hare-—her little joke, her play on words and their sounds …

LOVE

Sore point. Nothing to my wife or two daughters—her granddaughters. . . . No love from Grandmother Betty. This was a business letter, Mother the proofreader to Norman, her son, the author, the writer, the professor, the man Dad called Peanuts and Doc.

And now the book she proofed is in a box of books I gave my father. Mother and Dad are back together again and they aren’t fighting.

This letter from my mother was written in January of 1970. The book appeared in print three months later. This is the only letter I have from her.

Somehow Mother’s letter to me got onto that book which was in the box of books that moved from my father back to me. Dad died in 1995.

I chanced to open a book yesterday, The Dictionary of Philosophy. It is old, tattered, sits on top of a tattered Roget’s Thesaurus. I use the dictionary when I want to chase down a term, in this case the word pragmatism. I was revising a piece for the Congress¹ and wanted to check a point. As I leaved (leafed?) through it, I found a handwritten letter on lined tablet paper. It was dated Sunday 8-14-95, three months before Dad died.

It went on for two pages:

Dear Norm & Kathy & your Gang in Champaign,

Will try to bring you up to date on what’s happening

over here. We sold the Club House (an antique mall). Didn’t realize what a relief it would be not to be tied down like we were.

Crops look good this year, We took a drive into Iowa City

and saw Bob and Helen Lentz. Our garden only has 3 tomato

plants. We got Leslie a new oxygen system that is a lot easier

to handle. We’re going to Minnesota toward the end of month, get in some real serious fishing and loafing.

I’ve got a box of books to send back for you. Some may not have been yours but if you don’t want them take them to a book store for .05 to .10 a piece and get rid of them any way you want to.

If you get a chance drop a line some time—

Love to you all,

Dad and Les.

He died three months after he wrote this letter, three months before I brought the box of books home from the Amanas. His letter to me has been in The Dictionary of Philosophy, next to my desk, since November 1995, one floor above the box of books in the basement which contained Mother’s letter to me. I’m pretty sure now that he knew he was sending Mother’s letter back to me.

Mother died in 1996. After Dad died, on a sunny September Saturday morning, down river from the docks in Rock Island, I stood on the top deck of the Delta Queen and tried to throw his ashes on the water of the Mississippi River. The wind blew the ashes back over my arms and legs. Mother was cremated too, but I do not know where her ashes are.