One thing leads to another....

This afternoon found my husband and me (yes, that's grammatically correct...I think) rummaging around in the musty interior of an old mobile home which has occupied a place in the woods behind our house for many years. Our goal was to empty the contents of the trailer because it had been sold and the new owner planned to move it this weekend. He's a neighbor who's just gone through a divorce and needed a roof over his head until he could come up with a better alternative.

The reason the mobile home is in our woods goes back to 1999 and the specter of Y2K. My husband was an employee of the county and drove a small city bus which transported mostly senior citizens to the store and library, etc. One of his regulars asked if she might park a mobile home in our woods so that in the event of global disaster she would have a place to live. My husband, being an old softy, said that she could. The mobile home was put in place, the lady proceeded to hoard innumerable rolls of toilet paper and then she died. Before the year 2000 could even arrive. There's a moral in there somewhere.

Anyway, along came a friend who was moving out of the state. He asked if he might store some of his belongings in the mobile home since it was just sitting there empty. Being old softies, we said he could. Now, I-don't-know-how-many-years later, his belongings, in considerably sadder shape, are still in the mobile home. A couple of years ago he invited us to see if there was anything we could use and then throw the rest. He wasn't asking much, right?

So, here we were this afternoon trying to decide what should be saved and what should be thrown. Our son's drum set...save. Our other son's textbooks from tech school...save. (Why?) Now I had been through all the books and had found lots of fascinating volumes which now lived on my bookshelves, so when my hubby asked if I wanted any of the books I resolutely said, "Nope. I got all the books out of here that I wanted already."

"Not even one called 'The Life of Jesus' that's really old?', he said, holding up an obviously ancient little hardback book, missing its spine. Well, the bibliophilic maternal instincts kicked in and my resolve...dissolved.

"Well, maybe that one," I said, still trying to sound steely.

"How about a cookbook?" he asked innocently.

"Wait a minute, I'm coming to look," I replied climbing over boxes to see these books that I had obviously missed on a previous visit.

To make a long story longer, how could one resist books such as:

Gregg Shorthand Dictionary
God is Enough
Biography of James Hudson Taylor
Christ the Healer
The Natural Foods Ice Cream Book
Odd Vegetable Cookbook
The Two Covenants
Food is Your Best Medicine
Minnesota: Off the Beaten Path
The Merck Manual
THE MISUNDERSTOOD MAN!
The Three Battlegrounds-Frangipane
With My Whole Heart-Karen Mains
Satan's Underground
Grandchildren Are So Much Fun, I Should Have Had Them First
Lord Heal My Hurts-Kay Arthur
Nice 'n' Easy Family Cookbook
and the piece de resistance (?)
Half a Can of Tomato Paste and Other Culinary Dilemmas (The Cookbook
That Shows You What To Do With What's Left Over When You Have to Buy
Too Much)
plus a few copies of Colonial Home

Ah yes. Who could resist? I think I'll be culling my bookshelves to make room.

G'night!