Compendia

When I was a kid, my parents had a set of encyclopedias. I have a vague recollection of them being Collier's encyclopediae - this looks familiar to me -- but I'm really not sure.

I would use them, as the traditional use goes, for doing school projects, and occasionally homework. Whenever I did, I was impressed by how heavy these books were. They weren't OED-massive, but they were substantial. I remember the texture of the pages -- a sort of heavy vellum, meant for substantial and long-term use. I'd feel it as I flipped over the color illustrations, which even then impressed me with their quality. With them had come a collection of volumes of children's stories. Some were ones that I'd heard of before, like Robinson Crusoe, and similar tales; others I'd not. A few were, frankly, inexplicable to me -- to this day, I have no idea how the king in one secretly passed a message; it had something to do with the number of loaves of bread in a basket, but his cunning was clearly past my understanding then, and I doubt I asked my parents about it.

I'm sure that they bought it via an encyclopedia salesman, and that it was sold on the presumption that it would give your child an edge, make your child smart. I have no idea what my parents paid for it. At the time, I accepted it as just something we had, but now I realize that this was a big deal, something that, given their very modest financial circumstances, was not at all easy to do. But they did it. For me.

I don't recall ever thanking them for it.