The Old West

Driving back from my mother's house after Christmas I had in my trunk a box that, in addition to the visible cargo, also held a great deal of nostalgia and sentiment for me. They were nineteen volumes of a series Time-Life Books did called The Old West.

They were first printed in the 1970s. I was a voracious reader as a kid, especially of American history, so my parents got me a subscription. I believe that a book came every other month or so, and I loved them. They were leather-bound to reproduce the look and feel of a saddle, and predominantly pictures, whether old photographs or paintings by prominent Western artists like Charles M. Russell or Fredric Remington. Each book dealt with a slice of history of the American frontier, with titles like The Cowboys, The Indians, The Soldiers, The Gunfighters, The Forty-Niners, etc. I remember poring over them, especially the ones that dealt with the more cinematic topics, such as The Gunfighters and The Soldiers. The former had a detailed analysis, complete with diagrams, of the Shootout at the OK Corral, which has stayed with me through every movie I've ever seen on the subject.

Those books I had in my youth are gone. When I was in high school, my parents newly separated, we moved around a lot, living in rented houses in Ringwood, New Jersey. One of them had a basement that had a horrible mold problem. We stored all my books down there, a recipe for disaster if you're a bibliophile--the books were ruined. It still eats at me today.

My maternal grandfather also owned a set of the books. I had two grandfathers, of course. I have to say I was closer to my paternal grandfather, who was a country boy from Rabbit Hash, Kentucky and doted on me when I was a small boy. If my father's parents were more Hee-Haw--cornbread and snap beans, my maternal grandparents were more Mad Men--martinis and trips to Europe. Both sides of the family were and remain lovely people, but I always felt a stronger bond with my father's side of the family.

However, we are all a combination of two strands of DNA, and there are parts of myself that clearly stem from my mother's father. He was an autodidact and a bibliophile. I have vivid memories of his den, where he had impressive bookshelves well stocked with volumes, mostly of the Time-Life variety, on subjects like American history, politics, and literature. On visits I used to plop myself in a comfy chair and leaf through them, picturing myself leading a life of learning as an adult. It wasn't the library of a true intellectual--there were plenty of Reader's Digest Condensed Books, but to a kid it seemed very august.

He died in 2002. My grandmother, his widow, recently had a big year. She turned 90, and the family moved her from Florida, where she and my grandfather had retired over thirty years ago, back up North to Michigan, so she could be more closely cared for. She sold her house and much of the stuff was pared down. I made one request--I wanted the Old West books. My uncle Steve, who drove Grandma and her belongings northward, graciously offered to pack them in a box for me. When he next visited my mom in Gettysburg, he brought them along, and now I have brought them the last leg of their trip back to me.

I've just been going through them again, reliving those heady days of a teenage boy, my head full of old Western films and a love of history. I'm also finding a few neat things, such as a page of notes my grandfather made, or a notation on the frontispiece of one of the volumes reading, "Finished, 1/2/75." He was a man who never stopped learning. I believe right before he died he was studying the railroads of Europe during World War II.

A quick check of the Internet reveals that there are actually 26 volumes to the series. My grandfather must have stopped buying them at one point. No matter, in this day and age I can pick them up cheap on eBay, and my bids on the missing seven volumes are in. I'm in extreme belt-tightening mode, but I need to complete this set.