Dusty Books, Frontier Librarian

Chapter 1

Dusty introduces himself... Family and Personal History... "What I remember"... Starting in the business... Not a 'one horse town'... GOLD... Plans made, books bought... Passage booked for 'Around the Horn'... The Sea Voyage Begins...

I'm going to introduce myself before I set out on this shebang. I am the original, complete and true, in the flesh Dusty Books. Howdy and Welcome! My true Christian given name is not Dusty and the rest of my last name, which had 'Book' in it, has been abandoned and out of use by me for so many years, that I pretend I don't remember either of them. And I'm still pretending. Now in the autumn of my years there are no blood relatives I care to claim that might remember me, for I was one of those that set out to the Great West to find my fortune and the Glory of Gold in California.

I wasn't too young a pup at the time, but I was still a yokel. I've had my share of adventures, and misadventures as well. I have found my little niche in life some time earlier during a recovery period from a broken leg, which has left me not too game a creature for the fast riding of a horse, or the work of the farm. I still creak when I walk from that incident involving a bucking horse, a little too much of Bacchus' finest for courage and the lure of a wager. This combined with a Bosephus like creature that was best suited to be ridden by a minion from Hell, and I found myself in a leg splint for six months, with little to do but read. I decided to find a pursuit in life more suited to a genteel temperament, and of course lacking in physical labor. I thought that Library work of some kind might be a good sound course to take up as a life's profession, until a better one came along at any rate. Libraries at the time were largely a business, the lending library being a source of entertainment for the populace, even amongst the illeterate (sic), since someone could be found to read to a group. This enterprise was attractive, since the material was rented and thus an income generated.

I had been taught to read and the other two of my three R's in a one room school house near Pawnatawee, Michigan. It was a very small town. Our origins were from one of the mass migrations from Europe and my parents felt that I should be educated in English. I thus became a slave to book reading and newspapers, and since I became the literate one in the family, I was expected to share it with my family. They were farming folk, raising a few crops to eat and wheat growers in season. We had a few drayage horses to pull the plows and tow around our hay wagon, a milk cow, and the usual quota of chickens, dogs and cats.

We were in an area where a fast horse could win you a few dollars in impromptu horse races. It was with this motivation that I set out to tame a magnificent looking animal bought for what I believe was too cheap a cost. I think the former owner wanted to be ride of this cantankerous creature, as I was well rid of it, but not soon enough as it worked out. Well in youth you have to sow a few wild oats and what comes up is way too often a vast collection of weeds. I do thank the animal, now firmly esconcsed (sic) in the fires of Hell, I trust and hope, for the service of giving me an alternate and less sweaty path to pursue as my life's work.

Not that this life of mine was not work or without a significant peril or two. In fact had I known what I would experience in the last forty years doing this, I may have been tempted to go in another direction. Don't get me wrong, Dear Reader, I wouldn't have changed it for the world. A few less mistakes perhaps, including a lot less hard liquor, and a contented life of marriage and home life. Well I feel ankle deep right now! I won't divulge the commodity, but you wipe it off your boots when you come inside. Make no mistake I did things just the way I wanted to, and when I couldn't figure it out, I tussled with it and gave it my best try. Now at the ripe old age of 62, I find myself speaking with some authority on many subjects, and since many of my contemporaries are now dead and buried, but not gone from my heart I assure you, I have a continuingly (sic) dwindling supply of people ready to contradict what I remember. This little tome is perhaps better titled 'What I Remember'. It has facts, but frankly I don't remember what is truth, what I have forgotten or glossed over in the bounds of good taste or guilt, or what I made up because it was a good story.

I found myself with what I considered to be a tidy sum after the sale of the farm, my parents having passed on to that greater glory. They were old people made even older by the strenuousness of their chosen life. First my Mother, and then my Father, in short order within a year of one another. No sinister or mysterious death for them, no Sir. Both died in their beds with family such as it was surrounding them, of old age, and a good preacher present to send them on their way.

My little brother was a strapping lad of 18 when they passed, and we agreed to part friends and split our estate in the customary half. Philosophically we differed, and our family though we shared the farm enterprise was never really close. We were as different as night and day my brother and I. My Father always suspicioned that I was the son of a Rambler who had somehow besmirched my Mother, since my brother Thomas was the image of the family line, tall and robust of body, while I seemed to take after someone not related to the family, someone with a more rotund presence. It may well have been so, but somehow it never came up in her presence, and unless under the influence of John Barleycorn's Finest, no one had the fortitude to bring it up.

I was always a bookish lad and encouraged to be so. On certain rare occasions I would read to the family. I would keep them enthralled by pretending to be reading some great classic, and making it all up out of thin air. Thus their education was flawed, but their entertainment enhanced. This would only backfire when I was asked to read some passage again. I would pretend to not be able to find it, and find an even more exciting one instead as soon as I could think of it.

So I got started in the library business by presenting myself after my recovery, such as it was, to the operator of one of these little establishments as a free laborer, with the understanding that I would be shown the business, and 'Room and Board' would be provided. 'Room' consisted of a mat behind the public area and 'Board' would have been better classified as "Bored', since my employer subsisted on a Spartan diet mostly featuring the consumption of beans cooked odiferously (sic) for hours.

My employer was as self-described. 'Another Gimp'. Perhaps my game leg is why he decided to show me the business. His name as Josephus Johnson, about as old as I am now. He smelled of Bay Rum, often, and Demon Rum, only on the infrequent Saturday night. He was a kind boss, who after a brief interval said I was worthy of my hire and actually started to pay me for my services. He was a good companion, if a bit off the straight and narrow. Though a mature 22 years old, I was still a novice to the ways of the world due to my farming background. The fact that I was somewhat well read is all the advantage I had. I had read about things, but not done them, you see. His penchant for gambling I could not criticize, since it was this, and a lack of actual skill in Bronco busting, that broke my leg.

To me the details of the trade were taken as a duck is matched to swimming in the pond. I took to it smartly, viewing the minutia with great fascination, sensing I had found a compatible profession. Josephus viewed the 'public' library with distain (sic), seeing them as competition. I didn't mind as long as employment was available in such a setting. It was for this reason Johnson had moved from Chicago to find a small town to pursue his business. Her dramatically described it as fleeing 'Like a Thief in the Night!'

Hattiesville was not a one horse town; it had died several years earlier. It lacked a library public or otherwise. Johnson started up in a little storefront and did a brisk business, collecting a fee for each item borrowed. He became one of the gathering spots, along with the Barbershop, General Store cracker barrel, and a most respectable Saloon, with a discreet card room in the back, a far cry from the type of saloon I was soon to visit. This was his third location, each one an improvement, and a cheaper rent. The former establishment was a Funeral Parlor, low rental due to superstition factor. It was nicely appointed, and though offered a room in the basement, I chose a mat upstairs, since below the floor is where the embalming room used to be and it still had a air of death about it. No ghosts were ever in evidence, but it wouldn't have surprised me. Johnson quipped that the Undertaker had left because there was not enough Death here to keep his business alive.

So I had a bit of training. Then came the interruption, and all was upset for a time. Word came from the Telegraph office with the delivery of the morning papers from Chicago and Detroit, which we actually sold daily, saving a few copies for Farmer's in the outlying areas who were only in to read on the weekend. The Delivery Boy told us breathlessly what had just come in on the Telegraph. He was an apprentice and practicing his Morse Code when the clicker came on. "GOLD" is what he said, repeating it once for emphasis, "GOLD!" Johnson quipped something about gold in his teeth, and the boy said "No Sir, Gold in California!"

That started it, The '49ers and Gold Fever. Knave and Knight, Gambler and Churchgoer, Drinker and Tea-Totaller, Men and even a fair number of Women, all got it, Gold Fever. Everybody had it, well almost everybody. Johnson would have no thought of the entire business, which puzzled me, since he was such a gambler. My thinking that he was a prime cut candidate. But possibly in his elder years he was not as willing to pick up and move. He was not as young, or as dimwitted as I, as he would have put it matter-of-factly, not that I would have been quick to agree. He had dire portents for the entire affair, quite rightly as it worked out, predicting that only a very lucky few would ever see anything out of the enterprise. All others would 'See the Elephant', current parlance for bankruptcy. Those with an enterprising turn of mind did very well, be it gambling or fraud, sharp practice or honest business. Little did I know what I was to face, but I went into it with my head up.

I was ready, burning really. Het up to get there. To go out to El Dorado and pick up those nuggets right off the street. I believed and accepted it all whole cloth and with the widest cut. I would not be alone for I was in a company of fools that made it out to the coast based on the lure of Gold. I had the idea that a library business might thrive, since folks might pay handsomely for reading matter. So I made my plans. Resolving to go West by going East first. I reasoned at the time that a wagon train was not very practical and traveling out West was still a wild affair, full of peril and hostile elements. I decided, romantic that I was, that a sea voyage would be an exciting way to go to California. I decided to purchase books and ship them with me to El Dorado, going down the Atlantic Coast, around the tip of South America, and on up the Pacific Coast to San Francisco and then into the magic Gold Country, by way of the Sacramento River. It all looked pretty good on the maps I consulted, and as I said it was a seafaring song I had in my heart. I did know that New York was an excellent place to buy serviceable books at a reasonable price. I then decided on the best way to ship a commodity that has some sensitivity to the affect of water. I went dockside and purchased seven barrels that were watertight. I found them at a scrapyard. They had the word 'Rum' burned into the side, but had been sliced at the top to provide an ideal water tight storage, once the bands were hammered down into place at the tops. Once I saw they had been fully dried out and cleaned, I realized that I had found a perfect storage method for a sea voyage. I decided to fill them up at the booksellers, picking what I thought the fellows would like to read, as well as a few practical books on more practical matters, such as gardening and carpentry. Many of the folks I would meet were just like the clientele at Hattiesville.

Additionally I thought I might do a little dramatic reading as well. I had been called upon to read the Bard often at home by a local clergyman, who was blessed with a classical education, and a sense of Theatre. He polished my rough edges on Old Will Shakespeare and molded me into a pretty fair reader. If I do say so myself, and I do so without hesitation except a comma, I will tussle with Mr. S at the mere mention of his name. I have been a devotee of his works for lo these many years, and have filled many a night with his words and the worlds of his characters, both for my personal entertainment and others.

So I resolved to proceed to Chicago and on to New York to purchase my stock. I bade goodbye to Johnson, who took it in good spirits, informing me that once I lost my shirt he'd still have some kind a of job for me, as long as he was about his business. I thought this was a kind gesture on his part. I shall now skip ahead, since my travel to New York was uneventful, my buying successful, and though exorbitant my passage was arranged. They saw the RUM on the side of the casks and were all cooperation. I don't know how they would have reacted to the actual cargo. It was a packet called 'Reliance' and it bore out well under that name. I gave the captain a small cask of the real article, and if he was to assume it was a sample of the rest, so be it.

We sailed with the tide, boxed our compass at the marker buoys, and were off South. I had personal letters of credit from the New York bank where the bulk of my inheritance money was placed, being assured that they would be honored in San Francisco and Sacramento as well. I would not 'See the Elephant' at least for this trip. I did anticipate and quite rightly that in the Gold fields everything would be at much more dear a price, the law of supply versus demand taking hold. It was with some respect for knaves that I did not carry all of my savings with me, feeling that even though I possessed a rough and ready appearance, I was not immune to robbery, or more than likely some confidence game that would somehow swindle me. I had learned my lesson, I felt at the time, about gambling, but I knew I was capable of being bamboozled, due to my trusting nature.

I decided to find a location for my library, by buying a good wagon once I got my stock there, and hauling the whole shebang with me until I found a permanent location. I had little trust for warehousing in that venerable city by the Golden Gate, since it had already been destroyed by fire more than several times, only to rise up again with missing nary a heartbeat. My fellow passengers about a hundred in number were in good confidence of the vessel, since it seemed seaworthy enough, and the sailors manning the bark seemed happy and sober. I knew if they ever decided to tap into my bogus 'supply' of Rum, they would remain so, though I have seen people drunk on words before and since. For want of a better reason I going to start a new section presently, this feeling like a long letter of reminiscence, which I suppose is what a memoir should be. I do apologise (sic) for my ramblings, but there is a really rip snorting tale to come, I promise. Read on, Macduff!

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