Texas

May 1, 2007

This is a guest post by Tom Michael while I’m on vacation.

As guest blogger for the week, it’s nice to be on the same page as mistersugar. Because he’s one of the most avid readers I know, he may appreciate this tale.

I live in the Big Bend region of rural Far West Texas, in the state’s largest county, at a spot called Calamity Creek. Big skies, few people. The nearby towns are Alpine, Marfa, Fort Davis and Marathon. Add up all four towns and we still don’t reach 10,000 – even on our tippy-toes.

I serve on the board of a local library, which is raising funds to build a new facility to replace the little cottage that houses it. The other day, an old man from the senior center walked in. He announced he’d never been in a library and had only read one book in his life (the Bible), but he wanted to try another. The librarian gave him Texas, by James Michener.

Since he was in a library, he thought the proper thing to do was to sit down and read. And that’s what he did, page by page – more than 1,500 of them. He came into the library in the morning, left in the evening and said very little.

A few days later, he finished Texas and returned it to the librarian. “That was a good story,” he said. “This Michener fellow ought to write another.”

Anton Zuiker ☄