Grandma's Love: An Old Book Story

 

Assignment:

Online shopping certainly has the advantage of convenience. But as with all change, something is lost while something is gained.  Do you retain any particularly sweet or vivid memories of shopping in the kind of specialty store that hardly exists anymore?  It needn't be of a bookshop; it can be a memory of shopping for anything: particular garments, foods, etc.  If yes, write and share with us a short personal essay or story about this.

            Am I proud? I was then. Was it my fault that I had been so in tune with my paternal grandmother’s number one weakness? I was her number one grandson, chronologically speaking of course.

We were in the local drug store – at least that’s what it was referred to as back then. Long before the big box chain stores, one might venture into the local…apothecary? Our home-grown drug store, probably not unlike most mom and pop’s carried a bevy of merchandise far beyond the well-stocked apothecary items. Most kids my age would gravitate to the (then) sparse toy aisle for a quick looksee at overpriced cheap things. I, however, would stop short at the front of the store, staring in awe at the drug store book spinner filled with enough books to make one dizzy if you spun it fast enough. Sadly, many of the dime store paperbacks probably found themselves trapped there, screaming, “stop this thing, I want to get off!” Tawdry romances, out of this world sci-fi (light on the sci), rollicking westerns, whodunit mysteries and who the heck is this person biographies; all of these were mixed in with the occasional bestseller and quick buck TV series tie-in’s. Once upon a time, I had been a slave to sitcom serials in print like the Brady Bunch and the Partridge Family, but it had been on this specific day with my grandma in tow when I had eyed the next paperback that she would purchase that I would likely never read. Yes, that was a problem too. So many paperbacks that looked so good in the store simply held so much less luster once I’d gotten them home. This one, however, shan’t not share the same fate, I had sworn this time.

            Matt Helm.

            The Betrayers, written by Donald Hamilton.

I had seen a Matt Helm movie on TV once. It was Dean Martin who had portrayed the role of the quasi-famous secret agent never to be confused with the far more relevant Bond, James Bond. I was only eleven at the time, and James Bond with his arresting eloquence always engaged in exotic far-off locales was a bit above my grade school I.Q. pay grade. Helm, on the other hand, well, what was it about Matt Helm that had had me so engrossed, sitting way too close to the tube, which apparently at that time had been bad for my eyes? I don’t know!

“Buy me,” the book beckoned. “Get me off this crazy thing.”

I lifted it from its minimum-security circular cell and eyed the printed price on the front cover. Ninety-five cents, that was also above my grade school pay grade.

I didn’t have that kind of coinage.

My little short grandma did.

I gulped a guilty gulp, shot a shame filled glance around my immediate perimeter, turned the book over and read the synopsis.

Hawaii?

I knew about Hawaii. Hawaii was an island, all surrounded by water and stuff, and everyone that I knew wanted to go there.

Or maybe their parents did; there was a whole lot of people who loved Hawaii.

Grandma M came up behind me at that point.

“What is that?” she asked, nodding toward the book.

“Hawaii is s-o-o-o-o cool,” I told her. “I always wanted to know about Hawaii.”

“Mmmm, Hawaii,” she nodded dreamily.

I wish that I had wondered just then where her travels may have taken her over her long lifetime. Had she ever traveled? I never knew of the life she and my grandpa had led beyond the two-family house they called home on 91^st Street in Jackson Heights, Queens, only blocks away from New York’s (not so) famed LaGuardia Airport.

“You love reading, don’t you?” she asked, knowing full well that my appetite for books was only surpassed by my insatiable hunger for her world-famous (it had to be world-famous, it was that good) candied sweet potatoes.

I nodded, and licked my lips.

“What other islands are ‘so cool’?” she teased.

Was she teasing? What other islands did I know of beyond Long Island, where I lived? This should have been a simple transaction between number one grandson and equally uno grandma. Now, it was a test. A test of what, though? She really hadn’t examined the book. It could have been a shameless, trashy, you-know-what type, but before I could say, ‘I love you, Nana,’ into her handheld plastic basket and into my life the book went.

I don’t remember if it had been a good book or not, but I did actually learn something about the island of Hawaii.

Brace yourselves, brave readers.

Hawaii is more than just one island!

Really!

There was Molokai, and Kauai, and some other one that I cannot remember.

Who knew?

I did then.

I still know now.

Mmmm, Hawaii.

 

Only a week ago, I ordered a set of Matt Helm DVD’s. It has been too many years to count since I have seen my only Matt Helm movie sitting alongside mom and dad in our Long Island living room. The ABC Movie of the Week that night had been “The Silencers.”

Dean Martin drinking and philandering with floozies at light speed. Family friendly fodder, this was not. What kind of parents were mine? This kind of thing would never be acceptable in this day and

(age).

 

In 2007, my son was only four.

He pedaled his trike while I walked alongside wondering if he might ever grow tired. His legs worked furiously, mine not as much, yet I was the one out of breath. We had finally taken a break at my behest on a dead-end street in our Forest Hills, Queens neighborhood. He climbed off his bike, moved to the closed gate before us and peered through the diamond shaped peepholes at the eerily muted tableau beyond. We were at a Highway Department maintenance facility on a silent Sunday morn. Hulking trucks slept soundlessly; a lone gas pump stood sentry in the hushed sanctuary.

“This is like the Langoliers,” Justin whispered, looking at me for confirmation. Stephen King’s, the Langoliers had been his favorite movie of all-time.

The parenting apple had apparently not fallen far from its tree. Stephen King at four? What kind of parent did that make me?

 

The old-fashioned drug store has been demoted to thrift store now. Old people like me pop into these mom and pop’s on occasion, maybe to laugh, maybe to smile, maybe just to breathe deep and inhale years past, maybe through the pages and bindings of old books, maybe trying to recapture the glorious parts of our past.

Maybe to say ‘thank-you. Thank you, Nana for the books and gifts you bestowed upon me on a whim.

My whim, I’m sure.

Maybe I was clever.

Maybe I wish to talk to her just one more time, my little short grandma.

Maybe to say, ‘I’m sorry.’

Definitely to say, ‘I love you.’

Tom / June 2023