Apple's Greens

When I picked Walt up from pre-school yesterday, he was very excited to show me the two new Curious George books he had in his cubby.  "Where did you get these kiddo? "  He explained that the teacher took us to "Apple's Greens" to look at books and he picked out the George books.  "It's not like the library Daddy.  I can keep these for ever and ever and ever."
This made my day or perhaps even my week or month.  I'm not sure if this is nature or nurture but I do feel satisfied that Walt has his priorities in place.
This sent me into reverie on a number of fronts.  I remembered that when Steph and I picked our first apartment in the City, the fact that it was only two blocks from Green Apple Books was a major selling point.  It has been a pilgrimage site for me since I first started making the trip south on my own when I was in high school.  It was an easy first stop to make just minutes after crossing the Golden Gate.  If you are not familiar with it, I can say it is like the Platonic ideal of a idiosyncratic, inviting, and independent neighborhood bookstore.  Steph reminded me that it was the first place that I took her in San Francisco.  It's floors are uneven and creaky, it can be a difficult squeeze to make your may through the labyrinth of shelves, and while it is packed with many books that you might be searching for it is not so extensive that it lacks judgement.  It is clear that an individual (or more precisely, a collection of individuals) selected these books with care and organized them in this way.
Now, I love the public library and I think of it as one of the bedrock civic institutions of America.  San Francisco has fantastic public libraries and I use them a lot both for myself and Walt.  But I will never stop acquiring books.  They are really the only material possessions which matter much to me.  They are the signposts through I mark the passage of my life.
This copy of A Moveable Feast made me want to move to Paris.
Once in Paris, I traded fifteen books at Shakespeare & Company for I this copy of V which was a companion for many hours on European trains.
This copy of The Exploration Of The Colorado River And  Its Canyons made nearly 100 trips through the Grand Canyon ready to be pulled from my ammo can whenever needed.
Casey read this copy of School For Fools aloud to me as we drove the backroads of the Michigan's Upper Peninsula and I imagined the birch forests must look very much like the belt of woods stretching across the Soviet Union (and I later found out for myself that this was true).
You get the idea.  I could play this game for a long time.  These books have provided with with solace, joy, wisdom, laughter, distraction, illumination, and insight.  It makes me very happy to think that they may be able to provide this for Walt as well.