In the bye and bye days, things were different. They are always different to each generation. Everyone was young once and those days are remembered as the “good old days.” My good old days involved being read to or reading books myself. Books are those things with covers over thinner paper pages. There are still people around from my generation who prefer them to the digital versions. There are some tactile feelings that are missed today. A blue light glaring in your face is just not the same thing to some folks. It is true that you had to have book cases back then.
In fact, I can remember when The Blonde in the house and I were newly married, and had just been discharged from my army duty. We had some books, but no place to put them. We could not afford a factory made bookcase. After some search I found some bricks and some wood which could be used for shelving. We took those bricks and wood, piled up the bricks and placed the wood at a book height levels and we had a fabulous bookcase. We kept that bookcase in our living room for several years until we left that city for another job. It is nice to think of the way things were once in a while!
Once of my favorite book series was the Oz books by L. Frank Baum. I must have read the “Wizard of Oz” umpteen times along with several other OZ books that Baum wrote. Other authors continued the series including Baum’s grandson, but none of them had the magic that those written by Baum did. We had the first printing of the Oz series which naturally had the fine illustrations of a type that are not really produced today. The bad part of this story is that when I was away at college, my mother gave the books to the library. I was really ticked about that, and probably still am. However, things happen and you learn to live with them.
When our kids came along, I bought newer editions of the Oz books and made sure to read them to the new generation. That enabled me to read them again for myself and read about the characters that have not appeared in movies – at least as far as I know. I speak of the Hungry Tiger, Tik-Tok, the Sawhorse, Jack Pumpkinhead, The Shaggy Man, Ozma, Belinda (a chicken) and several others. One of the things that I never figured out was that the animals in OZ, including Belinda, could talk, except for poor old Toto. Even the wooden Sawhorse who was brought to life by some magic powder that Ozma sprinkled on him could talk. Poor old Toto never did. As I recall he was not in any other books and perhaps that is the reason. Barking was not enough for a good story.
There were some good morals in the stories. You will recall that the good witches were on the winning side, but the bad witches did not fare so well. The Munchkins even got to appear in the movie, although some people are so jaded that they don’t believe that they were the real Munchkins. Then there was Ozma a beautiful princess who became queen of Oz after the Wizard left in his balloon. Well, not right after as one of the nasty witches turned her into a boy so she spent a good part of her growing up days as a boy. However, truth, justice and Baum prevailed and she overcame the spell and returned to her rightful form.
I wonder what kind of a view would be prevalent today if a book were written with a plot about a boy into a girl! Probably something a bit different than what L. Frank Baum intended!
Barry Evans writes about Life in The Villages for Villages-News.com.
