Info Junkies

I have a friend whom I’ve written about before. Although we’re a generation apart, we have much in common, including previous ownership of encyclopedias. Remember when they were the fount of all knowledge?

The Encyclopedia Americana existed in my childhood home before I did. According to my mother, Dad bought it a decade before, from a door-to-door salesman after one too many drinks. (My dad, not the salesman.) As I remember, if the set had been priced by the pound, he’d have never been able to afford it. Whenever a school report was assigned, I consulted the set, proudly displayed in our living room bookcase. I never liked it, and was envious of my friends, who had newer, more up-to-date versions with more pictures.

My pal had no set during her childhood, since her frugal parents felt it unaffordable. While a middle schooler, she went home with a girl who owned a set called The Book of Knowledge. She forgot all about her disgruntled friend and lost herself in the pages. So, when a traveling salesman came knocking at my friend’s townhouse door in 1950, she was an easy mark.  Her husband arrived home by bus, since they had no car, to find a tearful wife, who confessed she’d done “a terrible thing.” She’d signed a contract to buy the Encyclopedia Brittanica, something she’d wanted forever.

Being the kind husband that he was, he looked around the empty place, devoid of even a phone, as well as furniture except for a card table and a bed. He patted her on the back and said, “Well, we have plenty of room for it.” She tells me they paid it off “on time” as we used to say.  

Fast forward to the early 1960’s when the family’s children started school. It seems that my friend purchased a SECOND set—this time the gold standard of the genre: The World Book. She felt her kids needed it for school and she wouldn’t mind cruising it a bit herself.

It took considerable persuasion from her kids, in the early 2000’s, to convince their mother it was time for both sets to go. “Mom, anything you want to know is on the internet. You don’t need these big clunky things anymore,” was the plea, which eventually hit home.

On a lark, my Old School buddy recently googled encyclopedias and found World Book is still published. Maybe it’s not too late for her to replace her set!