The Bookshelves
The summer of 1964, my father flew my mother, myself, and my sister up to the
Teterboro Airport from our home in Georgia.  From there, we rented a car and
drove in to Flushing to his parents' house on Smart Street.

After visiting for a while, my father headed out to the airport to fly the
small company plane back home.  He had to get back to work and wouldn't be
able to go with us even once to the World's Fair in Flushing Meadows.

But it was on that warm New York day that I walked into my grandparents' house
for the first time, the one they'd lived in since before my father was born. 
Why we'd never visited them before, I don't know.  They always came down south
to visit us.  It was a typical two story city house with small dark rooms,
Persian runners and a clutter of antique furniture and knickknacks.

I'd always loved antiques. Ever since I was a small child I'd been drawn to
them.  But this trait did not run in the family at all, not from either of my
parents and only by parsimony from my grandparents. The reason their house was
filled with antiques was that they never bought furniture (or anything else)
unless they had to.  So their house was filled with what had come from their
families, from the early days of their marriage, from who knows where.  And I
spent that family visit - when we weren't at the World's Fair - meeting each
and every antique item like a new friend.

And then there were the bookshelves. They were along a wall in the small,
crowded living room of my grandparents' little house.  I fell in love with
them at first sight.  They were beautifully made, everything fit well, the
glass panels that lifted up and slid back into the top of the shelf, each
shelf a unit unto itself that stacked onto the next.  They were of a dark warm
wood, walnut perhaps.  What was in them, I do not remember.  I just loved
them.  And I kept on admiring them all through that long ago visit, lingering
in front of them to study their lines.
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