Adventures in the Land of Thrift

Venturing out to the Land of Thrift has pretty much become a weekly ritual for me as of late. On the weekends, when I find myself with little else to do, I wander the aisles of my local thrift stores looking for ancient treasures to rescue from the threat of mistreatment and annihilation. I often find myself on little tares for specific goods, focusing my searches on singular items, blinding myself to awesome treasures that do not fit the criteria of my present mission. In this regard, I always find new and exciting things even after visiting the same thrift store for the umpteen millionth time. So, now that I am on a quest of renewed literacy, I have been searching for books that pertain to the act of improving one's writing skills, are listed on the ALA banned books list, look generally bad-ass on a bookshelf, relate to obsolete trades or crafts, are published before the 1970's, or hold some sort of nostalgic value to me. Today, I happened upon a few books that held a great deal of nostalgic value to me. Hardy Boys novels published in 1985.

It may sound stupid, but I grabbed every copy I could get my greedy little mitts on. Unfortunately, that was only seven copies. But at a buck and a half each, plus the fifty percent off blue tag sale, it only came to a grand total of $5.51 after tax. I would have paid the full price, probably even more because honestly, how can you put a price on nostalgia? These are the books I cut my teeth on, the very first novels I read religiously. I can just picture little me, standing in the youth reading section of my local library frozen in awe of the giant (or seemingly giant to a young child) walls of shelves towering over me, brimming with books of all varieties. Choose your own adventure books, Tom Swifts, gripping tales of heroic youths and child detectives, tame mysteries, they were all begging to be plucked from the shelf and read. But as I scanned the vast sea of literature, it was that block of blue spined novels that caught my eye. I carefully slid one copy from the ranks and reviewed the cover. You see, as a youth, I was not aware of the adage discouraging the act of judging books by their covers. To me, that was business as usual, you know, my modus operandi as they say. And what a cover it was: two brothers just being total bad-ass mofos (me and my brother were bad-ass mofos so I could relate to this) checking out clues and solving mysteries that adults couldn't even piece together. I pulled two more copies down and headed to the check-out desk, chest out, strutting my literate little butt up to the counter with a look on my face that said "yeah, I read novels now, don't act like you aren't impressed". It was an amazing feeling. As it came to be, I returned to those towering shelves again and again pulling three books at a time until I had read my way through the Hardy Boys series, then I was on to the Encyclopedia Brown series, then a short tryst with Choose Your Own Adventures, then Goosebumps, then for some reason I got really into the Vietnam War and read a lot of non-fiction pertaining to the atrocities of attritional warfare (I never claimed to be a 100% normal child). But at the age of twenty seven, seeing that block of blue spined nostalgia on the thrift store book rack rubbing elbows with Reader's Digest Condensed Classics, that feeling of excitement I had as a budding reader came washing over me again. As I carefully slid a copy from its ranks and reviewed the cover, I had no other choice but to grab them all and strut up to the register with a look on my face that said "I'm twenty seven and read Hardy Boys, don't act like you aren't impressed". Now those books have found themselves a home on my bookshelf, folded into the ranks of some serious heavy duty literature. I know the Hardy Boys won't be scared, they are two bad-ass mofos that I consider just as timeless and culturally important as the Grapes of Wrath or the Lord of the Flies. Welcome home, boys. Welcome home.