Even those closest to me don’ know that I am a time traveler and world adventurer. I don’t talk much about it because some of them would never understand.
It began the Saturday afternoon Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel Mary Ann were looking for work.
Over the years, I rode a camel with Richard Burton in the 1800s when he went across the Arabian deserts to Mecca, then risked my life in the charge of the Light Brigade. Col. Roosevelt invited me to go horseback riding with him one morning.
Winston Churchill enticed me to spend a day at Chartwell, and I learned how to build a brick wall in the morning and paint in the afternoon.
In the Middle Ages I became a stonemason, and you can read all about it in Ruskin’s “Stones of Venice.” There was the winter night when young Dr. Will Mayo and I took a horsedrawn sleigh out to a rural farm where I held the lantern as he performed lifesaving surgery.
I spent a summer in the late 1940s at Sam Campbell’s island cottage in northern Wisconsin. I visited a little log cabin in the big woods and had dinner with the Ingalls’s family.
Right now, I’m taking a break from an old manual typewriter, up in a stuffy attic transcribing James Joyce’s strange story (his handwriting is atrocious), because a new author is downstairs in Sylvia Beach’s bookstore. I think his name is Hemingway. Soon, I’ve got to go over to Whistler’s studio to see how his portrait of his mother is coming along.
That’s just the beginning of my time travel and adventures. I have done them all, and no I am not completely nutty.
Do you want to know how I have experienced all these adventures? Books. I read books. Not movies or streaming videos or scrolling from one short TikTok or Instagram post to another. Books. Old-fashioned page turning, books. Books that have a slight smell to them, and you can touch. Christmas is a great time for books.
Children growing up can’t wait to unwrap their presents, then divide them into the useful gifts and fun gifts. Depending on the cover, a book goes into one pile or another.
Most kids are like bluejays, crows and magpies, all of which are instantly attracted to almost anything bright and shiny. In short, the toys.
The thing is, after playing with a toy for a while, it loses its charm and excitement. We want something more substantial than shooting low-powered rubber “missiles” at imaginary targets on the other side of the room. Barbie or American Girl dolls lose their appeal, and toymakers know it. That is why they come out with new models every year.
A book lasts, even after the cover is coming off, pages become unbound or there are more margin notes than text. Late in life, as we approach the time when our minds are away with the fairies, a smile creeps across our face when we remember a book from the past.
It gets even better when we reread one last visited years ago. Bertie Wooster is far more fun now than he was when we first met years ago.
Sometimes a book leads us into hopscotching from one author to another. After traipsing across the English moors with Holmes and Watson looking for that big dog, I migrated on to Dorothy L. Sayers, then Georges Simeon and to Agatha Christie. Sayers and Christie led me straight to writing my own mysteries, but mine sell less well.
Think back to your favorite books from the past. With books there’s no rush. Then try to remember why you liked them so much, how they inspired or touched your life. How did they make you feel?
Here is my suggestion for the Christmas shopping season: give books. If you are making out your own Santa list for your family and friends, suggest books. Be kind and give them some general themes, authors or topics that appeal to you.
Don’t take the easy route of going straight to your computer and buying books from a mammoth online company. They use algorithms to guide you straight to their preferred authors and titles. To make a book a truly great Christmas present, do the legwork and walk into a store.
The best place to begin is one of the thrift stores. My friend “Scrooge” is forever finding a book he thinks I might enjoy. He is almost always right.
That’s because thrift and used book stores have shelves full of books that someone has already read. Maybe they didn’t like it, but you might. Maybe they did like it, but had to reluctantly part with it to make room for more books.
Buying a book is the first step. Before you wrap and put a bow on it, take a few minutes to write a note why you bought that specific volume. Tell them what you like about the author or story; that might entice them to read it, and other books by the same author or on the same theme.
You know what will happen: you’ll go into the store to buy presents, then end up treating yourself to something that appeals to you. That is a good thing.
Be careful with buying books as a gift. You might magically convert the recipient into becoming a time-traveler who has worldwide adventures.
That’s what happened to me. I read Campbell’s “Beloved Rascals” and wound up reading the entire series. Then I veered off to a canoe trip with Eric Sevaried and we went on an adventure from northern Canada back to Minnesota in “Canoeing with the Cree.”
After that, I went back in time and further west with the great explorer Frazier. who traveled through the Canadian Wilderness in the 1700s.
It could get a lot worse, or perhaps even better. Reading “Stones of Venice” led to studying how Notre Dame in Paris was built. Pat and I had to see it. The same thing happened after Hercule Poirot and I were on the same ship on the Nile when a murder occurred. We had to see Egypt for ourselves.
For better or worse, she drew the line at a slow road trip through southwestern Minnesota after I read the three volumes chronicling the history of the Third Minnesota Militia during the Sioux Uprising. Instead, she insisted we had to go back to Paris on the trail of “The Da Vinci Code.”
Books are dangerous. They stretch the imagination and give new insights on the world. That is the best reason in the world to give books for Christmas.
