What do you want with a BOOK??

A recent journal post I read about party lines reminded me of one of our best family stories, one that’s passed into a private catchphrase.

My father’s mother was on a party line for years and years; the rural telephone co-op didn’t get around to putting in private lines out our way until the ’70s, so it wasn’t at all unusual to pick up a phone at her house and find a conversation already going on.  That’s how things were then.  It also meant that ever’ once in a while you got to eavesdrop on some king-hell funny conversations.

One day long ago, back when the world was new and all, my mother was out at the farm and picked up the phone, only to find the line occupied.  She recognized the voice of a farmer/rancher who was a crusty Old Fart, three parts deaf and half blind, too old to live by himself but too mule-headed to give up and move into town.  He also didn’t have any use for anything that didn’t affect him directly, particularly education.  He was on the line with his daughter-in-law, who lived further out from town, and apparently he’d called looking for his son to do some kind of work around the place for him.  It went like this:

Old Fart:  Is [son’s name] there?

Daughter-in-law:  He’s not here right now, Papa.  You want me to have him call you when he gets back?

O.F.:  Where’s he gone?  I need him to do sum’n fer me.

DIL:  He went down to Goldthwaite, Papa.

O.F.:  Well, what’d he go down there for?  (Thus implying that his son’s always gallivanting off someplace.)

DIL:  He went to get a buck, Papa.

O.F., who obviously heard just about half of that:  A BOOK??!?!  What the hell does he want with a book, he’s GOT a book!

DIL, in a wearily patient voice that suggests she’s been through this kind of thing pretty often:  No, Papa, he went to get a buck, for the sheep.

O.F., the light finally dawning:  Oh!  Well, I wish I’d known he’s a-goin’.  I’d a-liked to gone with him.

Mother somehow managed to get the phone hung up without snorting into the transmitter.  And after that, “what do you want with a BOOK?” became a family code whenever somebody mentioned buying or wanting something which was a minor luxury, or out-of-the-way, or just kinda strange.  Particularly books.

Erik Bloodaxe bothers the opaque racquetball with a besotted Uzi.  Fnord.