Cleaning up Mom's basement yields a gold mine of old books, and a revealing discovery. By Paul Sullivan

Date published: 3/4/2006

THEY WERE JUST boxes of old books. Who would want them?

No one, it seemed, so, with the renovation of Mom's basement under way, someone should go through those dusty, musty old boxes.

It was my brother's suggestion, and I agreed.

Last Saturday was a first crack at the task, a survey to get an idea of what was there.

At first glance, the answer appeared to be--not much.

Then I took a closer look.

I suppose every family has its readers, its nonreaders and its sort-of readers. Mine is no exception. The basement boxes were, for the most part, the boxes of readers.

Dad's old law books were there; so were his high school books and the histories and other titles of a lifetime. My grandfather Pa Henry was a serious scholar who read widely. His books took up two boxes and a steamer trunk.

It's funny how, if you know someone, you know what they read: Know the reading, you might say, and you know the reader.

Which is why I knew minutes after opening the first box that it contained the works of my older sister, senior sibling of the living Sullivan clan, she whose career was teaching English and medieval lit at a New York university.

Out to the car; out with the cell phone: "Hi, Sister. Guess whose undergrad English books I've come across in Mom's basement?"

"Oh, my goodness! So that's where they are!"

It was the first of a number of calls to sister Ann last Saturday as I began digging deeper into the various wooden and cardboard boxes and ancient steamer trunks. And I never even made it to the fine old cedar chest, said to have yet more books inside.

The more boxes I poked through, the bigger the task appeared to be.

To some, these might be "just a bunch of old books." To others--including me--they were a gold mine.

It was hard enough just getting past the stacks of National Geographics of recent vintage. I could see boxes--decades--of the older issues, covered with dust. (Next-time note: Bring not just gloves and my hand cart for heavy boxes, but also my shop vacuum.)

Date published: 3/4/2006