Selling Encyclopedias

Anybody want a set of encyclopedias? They’re yours for the asking, in near-perfect condition. They’ve taken up space in a small side table for, gee, I don’t know how many years, and if you think they’re useless in the 21st century, you just might be right.

The photographs are mostly gray, none too attractive, but I must say the plastic overlays of the human body are pretty darned advanced. Somehow they manage to omit, uh, potentially embarrassing details, yet seem to have everything else sharp and clear.

The pages on birds and flags and spiders are especially nice, and show just enough wear that I know the rest of the family used them too.

It took me a minute or two to pull out Volume S, find spiders, page through them, and admire the differences among them. Quick, right? I remember how convenient we found it not to have to walk to the library when we had to write a report on spiders. We probably saved as much as an hour or more because we had our own encyclopedias in the house.

Clicked on Google, just now, and had approximately 17,800,000 articles mentioning spiders, in 0.05 seconds. Hmmm.

By now I’m sure you understand that the encyclopedias I’m looking at so nostalgically are books. Yes, children, encyclopedias first came out in book form. And if you think I had to blow the dust off Volume S as I pick it off the shelf, you are dead right.

My dad was charmed into buying at least one, maybe two sets of encyclopedias, when I was growing up. I remember the salesman coming to the door, but I don’t recall how he got there. Must have driven, but I don’t remember seeing a car either.

Inasmuch as we lived 10 miles from the nearest library, a set of encyclopedias served us well, but I wonder how the poor fellow found us.

I know we had the Book of Knowledge and I think we had the World Book. Book of Knowledge was arranged by subject and required an index; the World Book was alphabetical.

We didn’t have Collier’s, nor the American encyclopedia, counterpoint to a British set, also victims of my pathetic memory. Does anyone still publish encyclopedias in book form? Do children still page hungrily from subject to subject?

What a nice eclectic mix in which to spend an afternoon. Look at World Book Volume I. Why, it runs from Iambic meter, to Izmir, a Turkish port on the Aegean Sea, with Iraq in between, described as a republic. And for Iambic meter, you are referred to “See Poetry (Metrical patterns.)” I hate it when they do that.

I decided that if I read the entire set, I’d know just about everything there is to know in the world. I was a voracious reader as a child, but I don’t think I ever got past Abraham, Plains of. Which was defined as “See Plains of Abraham.”

I have no idea what Daddy paid for those books, but if he’d had to go without lunch for a year to save for what he saw as our education, he’d have done it and we’d never have known.

When our children were of an age to need reference books, we decided that the tomes Daddy had bought for my brother and me were too outdated. That’s the problem with the print media – out of date before they hit the street. So we sucked it up a little and Dave went off to buy a set of encyclopedias. I don’t know how he even began. The phone book?

“Hello, can you tell me where can I buy a set of encyclopedias? Yes, I know salesmen usually come to us, but I know what I want and I’ll come and get them. No, we won’t be paying on the installment plan. I plan to pay for them in cash. OK? Hello? Hello?”

We encouraged our kids to do as we did: In the margin, in very light pencil, we would leave our initials and the date to record which one of us had looked up Aardvark, and when.

Suffice to say, we haven’t used the books in years. Certainly not since Internet access. Did I mention that the set swathed in cobwebs in our bedroom was published in 1969? In 1969, the girls were 12, 10, and 7. These encyclopedias got hard use.

You’d expect the entry for Computer to look a little different, likewise Calculator (the picture shows one the size of a toaster oven, and the young woman smiling at it has smoothly coiffed hair. Somehow she doesn’t make me think of a secretary. I’ve never seen anyone beam so ecstatically over today’s credit card-sized calculator.

Maybe next week we’ll ferret out some interesting 1969 articles.

That is, unless someone takes me up on my offer of a free encyclopedia.