Take a Book, Share a Book
I live in a tiny neighborhood nestled in a small city contained within the deep, Deep South.
So it’s not often that you hear someone knocking on your door at half-past four in the morning. Activities like that might prove to be lethal if practiced upon any one of my gun-toting neighbors, but fortunately for thia early-morning caller, I couldn’t be bothered to open my eyes all the way, let alone dig my handgun out of the closet.
I peeked through the cracked front door to find a weathered tweaker standing on my front porch.
“Hey…sorry to bother you, man, but I could totally haul that piano off your curb if you want…” At least he was dimly aware of the inconvenient time of the day.
My brain, still trying to boot up, sent a sound to my mouth which might have been interpreted as complete befuddlement to the situation that was unfolding. Apparently my visitor was a fluent speaker of incomprehensible muttering, because he hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the bright red piano sitting at the end of my driveway.
“That? Oh, that’s not a piano anymore…it’s a little free library.”
Oh, how I had turned the tables of complete confusion! He might as well have snatched the threadbare cap off of his mangy crown and scratched his head cartoonishly.
I clarified: “It’s not a piano anymore, it’s a little free library. It’s installed on a post. It’s not garbage. If you open the front, it’s filled with books. Feel free to take a book, but please don’t take the library.”
He mumbled something in acknowledgment and shuffled back to his truck-and-trailer, which was bristling with this morning’s haul of copper piping and discarded appliances.
In Direct Opposition to the South
There are three redeeming qualities about living as far South as I do:
- The cost of living is cheap
- I’m only 1.5 hours’ drive from the Gulf of Mexico
- Boiled Peanuts
That last one is barely hanging on by a thread. While I will never actively go out and seek these steamy, vinegary snacks on my own, I will never pass one up if offered to me.
Before I digress too far, I think the point that I’m trying to make is that everything else about living in the South amounts to nearly-unbearable misery.
Awful heat and blatant racism aside, there are certain political qualities that exist in the Deep South that will nearly always result in increased hardship, not only for those who vote for them, but their abundant progeny.
So, when book-banning started to ramp up (again) a couple of years ago, I built a meager Little Free Library in my front yard and stocked it with some of my faves, some classics, and some titles that I knew were going to be required reading for the school year.
Yes, I also made it a point to provide some of the more “controversial” banned books.
I added a guest book on a chain. Within, many neighbors scrawled their appreciation for the library, which was an unexpected, pleasant surprise. My own abundant progeny had turned out to be well-rounded, incredibly sharp, and thoughtful people. Some of these qualities, I believe, are owed to the mandatory reading that took place every day during their younger years.
Unfortunately, I had to decommission that little library after only one year because of a combination of my poor carpentry skills and the brutal weather of the region. Always a fan of the more unique libraries featured on the official site, I promised to myself that the next library would be something to topple them all.
Luckily for me, free pianos can be found on any Facebook marketplace. All you have to do is be willing to move it yourself. Even luckier is when I drove past a free piano sitting on the curb of the house four doors down.
Without much of a plan, I recruited my middle daughter and drove to Harbor Freight where I purchased two cheap furniture dollies. After returning home, each one of us carried a dolly down the street, and proceeded to wrestle the piano home, certain that every eye in the neighborhood was upon us, judging us on our perfectly legal activity that felt anything but.
The only real plan that I had for that piano was to hollow it out in some way to not only cut its weight, but to make room for as many books as possible. I removed ancient nails and screws to access its innards. I bought an angle grinder and cut out most of the iron harp that contributed a tremendous amount of weight to the piano, and then incorporated some of the aforementioned carpentry skills to build a box within its body, replete with a hinged door.
And for the finishing touches, I coated it in a thick layer of bright red house paint, designed some stencils for the front, installed solar-powered led lights, and hooked up a cobbled-together, motion-activated sound board that played a selection of piano music when the door was opened.
There are many things that I do in direct opposition to the stubborn and backward ways of the South, but this singular defiance is the one I’m most proud of.
