Life, actually…
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MY ANTEBELLUM CHRISTMAS PRESENT
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(Read text below and/or listen by clicking above.)
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Every trip to the old antebellum house was like Christmas Morning.
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Whenever I could get there, by way of bus or foot or bicycle or ride-hitching, I felt like Christmas had just gotten jump-started.
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The antebellum home in Downtown Tuscaloosa, back in the 1950’s, had expelled its original dwellers and converted itself into the County Library.
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It seemed to exist solely for my pleasure.
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Up the stairs, not racing, in slow motion—don’t want to incur the wrath of a shushing librarian—I head for bookcases containing the knowledge of the known world and the imagined knowledge of undiscovered worlds.
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Opening each book was like unwrapping a Christmas gift.
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Each volume contained its own peculiarities. In addition to the printed words within, there were always imagination-laden surprises:
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A pressed flower might drop spinning to the floor.
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A scrap of paper complete with cryptic message would unfold itself and read its contents to me.
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A margin scribble or an underline would challenge me to guess what a previous reader’s life was like.
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Mustard stains might tattle-tale whether the patron read at night or on the run at a hot dog stand.
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Unmistakable tobacco fragrances absorbed by the paper would be identified by brand-name (Cherry Blend was popular).
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Little crayoned bookmarks and turned-down corners made certain pages more intriguing.
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Coffee rings exposed the previous reader’s carelessness.
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Librarian mutilations included penciled numbers and rubber stamps and glued pockets and dog eared dated cards and taped-down dust jackets and intrusive binding materials and repaired/reinforced spines.
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The heft and texture and color and fragrance and flaws of the physical book were more fascinating than the book itself, at times.
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The powerful shower of Holmesian clues would almost make reading the book an anticlimactic exercise.
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To this day, I prefer the flawed personality of a well-used book to the pristine untouched edition that nobody ever opened.
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Every book has its own history, my dear Watson. I can tell you a lot about what that book has been through just from all the clues and hints of clues that warp it and give it character.
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Visit my antebellum shop in the Center of the Universe, Birmingham, Alabama and commence your sleuthing
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Jim Reed © 2025 A.D.