On Finding A Gold Mine In A Thrift Store

I love to read. I also possess a passion to become as liberal a thinker as I can be. A coming together of these facts presented itself to me one glorious day in the month of May, 1996.
I had been talking with a friend of mine named Bruce, and we had agreed that it would be beneficial to broaden our education beyond a narrow track of interests. We posited that by widening our circle of selected reading materials, we could achieve a definite intellectual increase.
I was staying in Coweta, Oklahoma, on a business trip, and met an eccentric man named Rick on an excursion out into the sleepy town of Colcord. I soon discovered that he was as avid a book lover as me, and that he had just procured The Harvard Classics, a set of books put together just after the turn of the 20th century. It turns out he had picked up the compendium at a thrift store and he was willing to sell it. He wanted a certain software title, which I was able to locate for the handsome sum of $90 dollars, and he offered to trade evenly. I still refer to that transaction as the best book investment I’ve ever made.
As I perused each of the books I quickly decided I wished to read the entire set through in numerical order. I began with the first volume, which includes The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, and I was immediately struck with awe. I made my way through the book in about a month’s time, and I made plans to continue at this clip until I’d read them all.
There were some missing pieces to my set, one of which I knew immediately, and some others I discovered later. The first and most conspicuous omission was volume 21, I Promesi Sposi (The Betrothed), by Manzoni. But over two years later, after searching fruitlessly in thrift shops and book stores across the country, this missing tome turned up in a most unexpected place. Another friend of mine, David, from Dayton, Ohio, found it in “The Last Chance” section of his local Salvation Army, for a mere 25 cents, and bought it for me.
Later on I added the Reading Guide and The Shelf of Fiction to fully complete my set, and now every volume sits proudly on the top shelves of the book cases behind my desk at my office. Every morning when I walk in, it’s as if I’m being warmly greeted by some of the wisest souls the world has ever known.
I’ve had some monumental experiences along the way, and I enjoy recounting them to anyone who will listen. After starting with Franklin in the late spring of 1996, by fall I was heavily into Emerson. I recall a sense of wonder at reading about his gardens, and I’ve looked at plant life differently ever since.
Then I recollect getting a beautiful glimpse of inward Christianity when I read Confessions by St. Augustine, & The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a’Kempis.
Later, I remember, I was in California when I read Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, and his view of economics has made me conscious of every penny spent and earned as I work my way through life.
I’ll never forget digging into Darwin’s Origin of Species and discovering not a man hell-bent on disproving the existence of God by promoting evolution, but a man truly fascinated by all he saw in nature.
Reading Don Quixote ranks as one of the funniest events of my life. Then and there I learned in a most humorous way the danger of becoming quixotic.
Then I could almost taste the salty air and smell the stench of decaying fish as I read R.H. Dana’s Two Years Before The Mast. I long to sail the open seas some day, and that desire has reached a fever pitch thanks to this spectacular journal of a seafarer.
Looking back I see that I’ve not been able to stay consistent with my initial goal of reading one volume per month, averaging instead one every three and a half months. Nevertheless, I remain as determined as I was at the beginning to stay the course and finish the project. I’m thrilled by what I’ve experienced thus far, and I’m eager to see what lies on the other side of the next musty page. My aim is still to broaden my education, but I never expected it to be such a beautiful and fun odyssey.
One thing is for certain, that it’s an interesting conversation piece to tell people that one of the best things I own came from a thrift store in Oklahoma.

*****UPDATE*****

Christopher R. Beha, a writer from New York, started a blog at the beginning of this year called The Whole Five Feet, in which he has vowed to read through the Harvard Classics in a year, roughly one volume per week (sure beats my pace!), and then post an essay at the completion of each. Click here to see his blog...I'm also adding it to my Frogroll. I guess I'm not alone, after all...