Texas

Guest blogging by Anton Zuiker

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.”