in the weeks leading up to this fall’s election, a series of large deliveries were made to assumption schools. aa man running for office (mayor, i think) arranged for mass quantities of books to be donated to the school. i’m not certain how expected these deliveries were but every time one was made there were so many books no one knew what to do with them. unfortunately, most of them were things that we didn’t need. some boxes made their way to the library, but many boxes were full of outdated textbooks in poor condition. i think most of them came from hawaii. eventually the majority of them were thrown away. the thought of so many pages going to waste makes me sad. however, before they were disposed of, all these boxes full of words sat stacked on the porch of fr. rich’s house, next door to ours. instead of playing “iraq” (a war game involving two teams and toy guns with rubber bands that fling pop can tabs at high velocities), the throngs of little boys who haunt the neighborhood would sit on the porch rifling through this public library, for that is truly what it was. it did not have shelves and dewey would surely have scoffed at the lack of organization but anyone was free to take anything they wanted. one day i was coming home from school in the afternoon and saw a father and daughter going through the volumes, picking out one here and one there to take home and become memories.
where' waldo? sucks when somebody already circled waldo.
