#17 pangor 25 Mar 2005 05:46
The various second hand stores is where most of my books came from, Goodwill, Salvation Army, etc. One such book was not a treasure in hiding, but did lead me to a strange situation. One pricipal during highschool was opposed to anything electronic being used by the students. So, scientific calculators were nolonger permitted. Our mathbooks had trig and log tables in the appendix, but they were not precise enough to use for the work we were doing in class. I started using a slide rule, but it was not precises enough either. So while in a second had store, I found a book of trig, log and other functions. When the pricipal during an inspection, saw the book and declared it to be trash. A couple of month latter I was in the museum, guess what I saw there? A copy of the book was sitting along side of the other tools of a surveyer of the turn of the century. In the description of the display, it was stated that all of the tools and books were selected for being the best of their kind available.
Then there was the time that I had a real find or a real hoax right in my hands. I think I was ten when this happened and so I did not know at the time what a find this book might have been. Latter when I learned more about the people that may have been involved, I could have kicked myself for losing that book. While brousing in the book section, I had found several old popular electronics magazines and several books. A clerk (who knew me) asked me to put the books on the sales counter until we were ready to checkout, that way I would not have to carry them around. I did so, when we were ready to check out, the books and magazines were missing.
The reason I remember the book was because of the strange message handwritten with what appeared to be fountain pen ink, on the inside front cover, near where that store would write the price for the book. Price for a hardback book like that one was ten cents. The book was one of Mark Twain's, I think it was, The Prince and The Pauper. For some reason the message stuck in my mind, it was, "To my friend N.T. Don't fry yourself. Don't disappoint T.E. He wants to do it. S.C." I would like to think that it was a hoax. Oh how I hope it was a hoax.
Pangor
Last edited by pangor on 25 Mar 2005 05:51; edited 2 times in total