Rootabaga Country

When I was a child no more than four, somebody, perhaps my Grand-mother, or my cousin, read me a good book. The illustrations were magical, and although they were not brightly coloured pictures, the stark black line illustrations had a balance and a power. I could never remember the title of this good book, or who wrote it, yet it had a power. There was something about Medicine Hat and the animals losing their tails and getting them back, an image of a wizard sitting on a mountain top, and a man-faced cat reading a newspaper with the light bulb on the end of his tail. As time went on and the memories of early childhood were shuffled to more remote positions, I couldn’t even remember If the good book and these strange images were real or imagined; whether someone had actually read it to me, or if it was a perpetual figment of my dreams.

Flash forward, to my 36th year, I’ve been working as an artist since I was fourteen. I’ve cracked every book I’ve encountered, looking for the good book pictures, and in that time I’ve read a lot of books. I’ve learned alot about books. I’ve written and illustrated three childrens' books, and have published two of them myself. One day I wandered into a used bookstore and looked into the case with the old childrens books. Among these dusty volumes, first editions, and rare hardcovers, I spied a book with a turnip on the spine, ‘Rootabaga Stories’ by Carl Sandburg. This book had a power, and some part of my subconscious screamed, ”look in that book!” And so I did. And as I leafed through the pictures and the stories, I found the images from my dreams, from my early childhood, I could hear my Grandmother reading. This was in fact the good book. It was a first edition review copy, with very weak hinges, It was one hundred dollars. I went without groceries for a week. I own that book.

Get yourself a Buckskin Whincher
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Read a good book or two
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