...my father's 1967 Thorndike Barnhart Comprehensive Desk Dictionary...

I keep my father's venerable Desk Dictionary close at hand.  It retains the deep rooted smell of Carlton 100s Menthol.  He chain smoked for all of his life, easily hitting up two to three packs a day.  His meager collection of items when he passed are in air tight boxes.  My boys and I will occasionally seek them out to smell 'Geegaw'.  The books, in particular, retain the smell excellently.  This smells of both old book and smoke.

 We've shifted to the digital age without looking back.  It's done.  I get it.  However, memory serves us rightly: why not look at the technology that served us for hundreds of years and come to an affectionate understanding of things?

The Desk Reference of yesteryear was a must.  Books were, at one time, a commodity.  Most of the middle class, and very few of the poor, had more than a single bookshelf in their homes.  That is why libraries proliferated after the Depression - they were simply necessary for those that were not part of the elite.  Democracy was available from the Public Library.

And - the home had its own bit of democratic knowledge.  There was always a bible, a dictionary and a family cookbook.  That was the world.

And, as I flip through this poorly kept Dictionary, as best as my dad I kept it, the glue has dried and cracked.  The binding is falling apart.  The pages are intact however.

A jackal squares off with a jaguar across a lake
of memories, or a portal to another place.

The Dictionary was not only 'it'.  It was a reference.  The Thorndike Barnhart I have open before me has: an etymology key, language abbreviations, pronunciation key, foreign sounds, the list of the editorial advisory committee, a preface (pointing out this version has 80,000 words, comprising 99% of the words used in newspapers and magazines, fiction and non-fiction), a grammar section, punctuation, manuscript formatting, proofreader marks, letter writing, and forms of (salutary) address.

The world was truly here.  What is a hauberk and what does it look like?  What is a plebiscite and what power do they hold?  Who knew that a pincer can also be called a chela?

The Dictionary is available.  It was your Internet.  It would expand your understanding and nuances of The New Yorker, or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or The Doors.

There is a section from "J" that has an unprecise square cut out from it.  It was something woefully important, I'm sure.

My earliest scribbles as a child.  I know them well.  I didn't have
access to paper so I have several scribble where I could.  Was paper
a commodity in the seventies?  Come on!