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D e c e m b e r 2015 93 WORDS By Lewis Turco rediff.com I begantocollectbooksassoonasIcould read and I enjoyed reading so much I veryearlydecidedIwantedtobeawrit- ertomyparentssorrowfortheywant- ed me to be a preacher like my father. I was soon myself bent over the old manual type- writer hed used to write sermons hunting and pecking out short stories. In junior high I wrotearticlesandpoemsfortheschoolpaper and in 1949 just before I entered high school one of my short stories won a prize in a sum- mertime high school fiction contest. It was published by the sponsor a local newspaper in Meriden Connecticut where I grew up. Id been a paperboy since I was in the fifth grade and in high school I was clippings librarian called the morgue clerk and cub reporter for The Morning Record. My seventh-grade shop teacher John Houdlette of Lincoln Junior High School in Meriden had a daughter Jean whom Id no- ticed early on. In high school we were class- mates and members of the same crowd. Some of the boys in that crowd started a sci- ence-fiction reading club called The Fantas- eerswhichsupportedaone-bookcaselibrary at my house. In 2004 I published a book ti- tled Fantaseers A Book of Memories theres a photo of the Fantaseers library in it. By the time we graduated of course all those books were left behind and became part of my own collection. By the time Jean and I were mar- ried in 1956 I had books everywhere and no place to put them so I brought a lot of them up to Jeans family place in Dresden Maine adding them to the large collection that was already there. They were like snow over the years they accumulated in drifts. In 1960 I began teaching English lit- erature and creative writing at Fenn Col- lege now Cleveland State University and since then Ive written a great many book and chapbook manuscripts more than 50 of which have appeared in print. Howev- er it was a late colleague of mine at the State University of New York at Oswego where I directed the Program in Writing Arts and taught for 31 years who got me started as a bookseller. His name was David Winslow. He had a Ph.D. in folklore but he had had several other careers as well including sell- ing antiques and books. He taught me what I know about books as a commodity when he and I on weekends mostly became what are known as book scouts. Wed sell the books we found upstate to downstate New York book dealers. And of course I also sold some of the books Id been accumulating. One day David called me up to say there was a big sale of stuff in Hannibal not far from Oswego. Theyd advertised books but when we got there all we found was a box of paperbacks under one table. Dave sneered and walked away to look at other things but I went through the paperbacks and found one a first-edition paperback original titled My Hope for America by Lyndon Baines John- son. I bought it for 10 cents. When we got back to the car Dave saw Id bought something asked to see it and then began to rag me about it. All Id paid for it was a dime but he acted as though Id thrown away a fortune. By the time we got home I was furious and decided to wreak my revenge. My mother had been good with hand- icrafts and shed taught me how to bind a book. In college Id bound my paperback textbooks so theyd last longer and as an adult Id taken to binding paperbacks and restoring old books as a hobby. So I took the Johnson book quarter-bound it in cloth and leatherputitinapackagewithanoldleather- bound hymnal and sent it with return post- age to former President Lyndon Johnson. In an enclosed letter I asked him if hed be will- ing to sign my book in exchange for the hym- nal which I hoped he would accept as a gift. Not a great while after that I got his book back. President Johnson had signed a Presi- dential bookplate for me and he included a letter on official stationery telling me he was delighted with the hymnal which he was go- ing to place in the L. B. J. Presidential Library in Austin Texas. I pasted the bookplate onto the inside front cover of My Hope for Amer- ica and I tipped his letter into the volume. Then I called David and asked him to come oversoIcouldshowhimabookIdpickedup for ten cents at a lousy sale in Hannibal. Later on I sold the book for a lot of money on one of our downstate book trips. W hen Dave and I traveled to a dealer in Johnstown New York I was shown an old book with no cover page it was missing some other pages as well. At the time I was collecting books and doing research for a book manu- script Id soon write titled Satans Scourge A Narrative of the Age of Witchcraft in England and New England 1580-1697. I thought I rec- ognized the volume the dealer was showing me despite its lack of a title page so I bought it for 25. When I got it home I looked it up. Sure enough it was a first-edition copy of A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some Spirits etc. edited with a preface by Meric. Casaubon and published posthu- mously in London in 1659. Dr. Dee was Royal Mathematician to Queen Elizabeth I but he was also interest- ed in spiritual matters. The book Id found is one of the most famous occult books in the English language. It was a record of the con- versations William Kelly Dr. Dees con-man pal had with Madimi and many other ce- lestial beings as he dictated them to the good Paper is cooljust 561 years after Gutenberg. SheSheShelllShelSheSheShelShelShelSheSheShelShe fffLLLiiifefefe