A Good Book Is the Best of Friends

There is no finer summertime pleasure than reading to while away the hours.

I remember my first visit to the library and the card held tightly in my ten-year-old hands, granting me access to a whole new world.

Every week I dropped one book off and savored the experience of choosing another. As I grew older, I would carry home as many books as I could hold or the librarians would allow.

When we bought our summer place in Fogland, I couldn’t wait to visit the at Four Corners. What an enchanting place filled with all my favorite books and wonderful and oh so accommodating librarians!

C. S. Lewis said that “we read to know we are not alone.” I agree with the great Christian apologist.

As a young girl, I probably spent far too much time reading. But at the time, Fogland was mostly inhabited by retired folks, and there were no teens to associate with except occasional renters who spent a week or two in nearby cottages.

My family liked to take the boat out and fish, while I never really developed sea legs. So, I stayed at the summer house putting a meat loaf or roast in the oven, tending it from the chaise lounge under the tree with a book in my hand.

But even though I was all alone, I was in good company. I spent my time with Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre.

As a student at Wellesley College, I decided to do my thesis on a collection of nonfiction essays about Fogland. While I spent most of my time at a carrel on the fourth floor of the Margaret Clapp Library on campus, I also researched my stories at the Union Library, and in the process learned some history about my summer home. These seaside acres have been farmland since pre-Revolutionary days.

According to the Patchwork History of Tiverton, Rhode Island, an amusing incident occurred in the enemy’s camp on the night of October 8, 1777:

“A boy reported to the British officers that a large number of boats could be seen at the beach on the lower side of Fogland. By that time, it was too dark to distinguish objects across the river; but in expectation of a formidable attack, the alarm was raised; and the patrols turned out to spend a watchful night. When the light of morning came, to the chagrin of the English, the ‘boats’ were seen to be nothing but an array of newly stacked hay cocks on Almy’s fresh meadow.”

The history also records the Battle of Fogland or “Peas Fight,” the battle fought here in a field of peas.

When I joined the staff of the Tiverton-Little Compton Patch at its launch last November, one of the first places I visited was the Union Library. I needed story ideas, and once again I was surrounded by savvy librarians whose recommendations were invaluable.

It seems I have come full circle. I’m right back where I started: at home in my hometown library with my nose buried in a book.

ABOUT SEA, SKY & SPIRIT: Drawing from the many seasonal faces of Fogland, Linda Andrade Rodrigues paints vignettes about nature and spirituality.