1940's
Before I was old enough to read, my mother read to me every night at bedtime. I loved to hear her voice create words out of squiggles on the page.
My favorite book then was THE FARM TWINS by Lucy Fitch Perkins. A big fat book with a stiff yellow cover, it featured drawings of the twins on the cover. It ran 200-pages long, like a real grown-up book, and I adored it.
I never tired of the story: Someone left twin babies in Mrs. Tilly's laundry basket in her back yard. Everything that happened to them--playing with chicks, getting lost in the corn field, pulling the cat's tail--was an adventure. Yet Mr. and Mrs. Tilly and the twins and the farm and the horse and the dog and the cat seemed so real, as real as the world I lived in.
"Read it again!" I'd beg, and mother would.
She read it over and over and over, seven or eight or twelve times, before she refused to read it.
"You can read it yourself when you're old enough to read and old enough to have your own library card."
My own card! I knew that would be heaven. Mama told me frequently about the day she got her first card. Grandma had walked with her to the still almost new public library in our town, Alma, Nebraska. It was one of the most exciting days of her life, she said.
I knew what she meant when it was my turn to walk, with my mother, to the library, brick and two stories high. To get to the books, I had to climb a long flight of cement steps, cross a cement porch, and push open the heavy door. Then the smell of books enclosed me as I watched the librarian create my card. The very first book I checked out was THE FARM TWINS. I read it over and over again.
1970's
After spending most of my adult life in New York City, I came back to visit my hometown again. I looked at the tiny house where I was born and the two-story house where I grew up. I stopped in the Methodist church basement to test the knives Marcella had used to stab herself and found them as dull as I remembered. Then I went across the street to visit the library. The cement steps weren't quite as high as I remembered, but the book smell enveloped me as always. I walked around, looking at books on display. Some I'd loved, some my mother cherished. I sat at a table in the children's sections and read a thing or two.
On my way out, I noticed several large boxes full of books on the porch. The library, cleaning house, had them on sale for cheap. I nearly walked right by them when I saw a large book, it's yellow cover familiar. THE FARM TWINS. My breath shortened. I'd never expected to see it again.
The twins were sketched on the plain cover. I flipped the book open. "Well, I never did!" said Mr. Tilly in italics as he held a baby.
There it all was: birthday parties and lost in the rain. Old Dobbin with his mouth full of oats. Snip, snip the scissors. The squawking rooster on the clothes line. Sparks of fire dancing up the chimney.
"I could buy it," I thought. "It isn't much. But it's a big book, and heavy. Where would I find room for it in my luggage? Besides, I won't ever need it."
I laid it back on the pile.
2012
I'm living in Omaha, Nebraska, now and thinking about THE FARM TWINS. I'm thinking, "Boy, was it stupid of me not to buy that book when I had the chance." It's not the first time I've entertained that thought.
As time passed, I realized that THE FARM TWINS had given me certain goals in writing. The desire to write a book. The desire to write about common ordinary things and common ordinary people. I'd begun to wonder if I would have written MAIL-ORDER KID if I hadn't loved THE FARM TWINS so much.
I wished so hard that I could read THE FARM TWINS again that Amazon popped into my mind. Amazon often features out-of-print books. What if they have THE FARM TWINS?
They did. Collectible: $139, $92.95, $70, and then at the bottom a couple for $6.30. School Editions, whatever that meant.
It took forever for the book to arrive. And it wasn't the big yellow book I remembered; instead, it was smaller and brown. But there stood the twins, their hands in their new pockets, just as I remembered. I opened the book.
My first surprise was the list of books that Lucy Fitch Perkins also wrote: 24, each with "twins" in the title. Dutch twins, Eskimo twins, Puritan twins. She was all over the
globe: Chinese, Swiss, Filipino, Irish, Belgian, Japanese, French, Norwegian, Scotch.
My second surprise was what a delightful couple Mr. and Mrs. Tilly are. Their love and support of one another is clear.
Mr. Tilly often tells his wife, "You are right; you are almost always right."
And his wife says, "Mr. Tilly, you are a very clever man."
Both are full of good humor. So is their home: "The sparks danced up the chimney. The teakettle sang on the stove. Little puffs of steam came out of the nose of the tea kettle and floated up to the top of the room."
No wonder I cherished this book!
And you? Do you have a childhood favorite?
from: a JoLt of CoFFeY
An Intermittent Newsletter
by Marilyn June Coffey
"BitterSweet Rebel"
some BitterSweet books
written by Marilyn June Coffey
MAIL-ORDER KID: An Orphan Train Rider's Story www.mail-orderkid.net
MARCELLA: A NOVEL To be reprinted Fall 2012.
GREAT PLAINS PATCHWORK: A Memoir
MARCELLA and GREAT PLAINS PATCHWORK are out of print
but can sometimes be bought from Amazon or other on-line book dealers.
A CRETAN CYCLE: Fragments unearthed from Knossos is a rare book.
To buy it, search eBay or other on-line book dealers.
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