The Tent.

I led Ned to the tent. Ned led Nell to the tent. Nell led Dan to the tent. Dan led Ellen to the tent. Ellen led Bill to the tent. Bill led Ted to the tent.Ted led Al to the tent. Al led Nan to the tent. Nan led Nat to the tent. Crash! (c. 1965)

There she stood. That brunette with the Crystal Gayle doo, whom my sister and I argued about.

“I’m that one . . . you’re the one with braids, ’cause her name’s Nan,” I would argue.

It was the late 60′s and this was the first book that I remember reading by myself. So when I discovered this little gem in all its yellow glory perched on the children’s book shelf, well, needless to say I grabbed it, looked around to make sure no one was watching, and put it in my pile of treasure finds.

At least once a year  we take “provisions trips”. At the Amish wholesalers we buy Oatmeal by the trash bag full (and it’s only a couple of dollars for a huge bag of Old Fashioned rolled oats!) and store it through the winter in a big five gallon bucket in our larder. But the real reason for going is so that we have an excuse to pop over to the “Re-Uz-It” in Ephrata to search the shelves and shelves of library discard books from all the school districts in the area. It’s such a fun treasure hunt. Each of us has a couple of authors that we search for . . .and it’s always changing. We fill up boxes of books and are happy as clams to read our treasures all the way home. The D’aulaire’s, Gene Stratton Porter, Maugerite d’Angeli, Horation Alger, Rosemary Sutcliffe George MacDonald and of course Munro Leaf . . . . these have become dear family friends over the years.

But this one was the find of all finds. It doesn’t look like much from the outside, but I wanted Lily to enjoy it as I did at her age. She plodded through the text, sounding out all the names . . .  when she got to the end, she wanted to know . . .

“what are all the kids doing in that tent? And where’s the mommy and daddy?”

What can I say? It was the late 60′s . . .

Is it just me or do you also remember the first time you LOVED a book??? What was it?