My back pages

I’ve been wanting to shoot this little setup for some time now, as that disconnected rotary phone just seemed to be calling to me. It wasn’t until after I’d shot it that I noticed the books that were on the shelf along with it. On the left is “Lyndon’s Legacy.” When I was growing up in Scotia, the bridge that carried the railroad tracks over Route 50 had graffiti that said, across the width of the bridge, “Read Lyndon’s Legacy by Kluckhohn.” My all-time favorite graffiti. It was there for years and years, and there may have been an attempt by two young turks to repaint it for all posterity, which failed when we realized the original painter must have actually walked along the ledge above the roadway. We were crazy, not insane.

This isn’t even my only copy of the book, by the way. I’ve skimmed it. It may have seemed important in 1967.

To the right, my great-grandmother’s copy of Gulliver’s Travels, “In Words of One Syllable.” She was awarded it for excellent spelling skills in the fourth grade, in 1904. She gave it to me when I was about the same age. The hymnary and the Bible I can’t explain, but they’re sure not mine. Daniel Boone and the others were among many circa-1860 books that were in my aunt’s house in Glenville, and I just wish I’d gotten my hands on more of them.

The two “modern” books just left of the phone? “The World According to Beaver,” and Tom Peyer’s “Contra-dictionary,” from back in the days when we were worried about the Iran-Contra scandal. If it weren’t for those two, the telephone would be the newest thing on the shelf.