I have a ghost, at least I think it’s a ghost. I have no other explanation for what happened.

Let me back up –  I have accumulated a lifetime of books. Some I purchased, others arrived as gifts from well-meaning friends. With the time demands of work and family, I left too many of these unread. I relegated them to the hall shelves, where they stood vigil and silently called to me as I passed. Year followed year, and their population grew, as did their cries for attention.

I’m retired now, so I set about to do right by these patient tomes. Vowing to read them all, I eagerly devoured the classics Watership Down, The Virginian, The Catcher in the Rye, and The Essays of E. B. White, and then pursued the lesser known volumes – histories, novels, non-fiction. It was a shame that I neglected them.

So last Saturday, I was once more scanning my library of unread books,  searching for something interesting. Having already read the low-hanging fruit, I found my choices slim. Nothing sparked my interest, so I scanned the shelves a second time. That’s when I saw it – the ghost.

Dumbfounded, I stared at an old paperback neatly tucked between Classic Feynman and Roosevelt’s New York. It was the yellow “Used” sticker that caught my eye. You know,  the kind they slap on used textbooks.

“When did I get this?” I murmured, pulling the book out. Its tattered cover, once olive green, had grayed with age. Carefully opening the yellowed pages, I found the copyright. It was printed in 1965 and published in 1854.

“Wow, 1854, that’s a century before I was born,” I murmured, mulling the coincidence.

Intrigued, I continued to flip. The mystery deepened. Affixed to the inside cover, I found a bookstore label; Southworth’s Bookstore, to be precise, with their logo – Statewide Service to Purdue Students. Neatly handwritten at the top was the name of the book’s owner, one Gene M. Ledgerwood of Linden, Indiana. Now, I’ve never purchased a book from the Purdue Bookstore, and I do not know Mr. Gene M. Ledgerwood, which begs the question, how did this book land on my shelf?

Rounding up the usual suspects I made my inquiries. It was a futile effort; my wife knew nothing, neither did my children. I mulled the question for some time and finally decided that it was a mystery without a solution. The best I could figure was that the ghost of Mr. Ledgerwood wanted me to read the book.

Anyway, I’ve been reading Thoreau’s Walden. Although I got through high school and college without doing so, the ghost figured it was about time that I did.

I shan’t trouble you with a review of this classic; besides, I have yet to finish it. However, in the first chapter, I came across an interesting, and little-known quote.

“When I ask for a garment of a particular form, my tailoress tells me gravely, ‘They do not make them so now,’ not emphasizing the ‘They’ at all, as if she quoted an authority as impersonal as the Fates,”

― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

It has been one hundred and sixty-three years since Thoreau penned those words. Do you suppose he would be surprised that ‘they’ continue to tell us what to do?

I suspect not; ’tis human nature after all, or is it nurture?

I don’t know. That’s a question for another day.

– David L Dahl.

You can read more about Olivia’s Story here,

or about my other books here.

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