Travels with George, in Search of Ben Hur and Other Meanderings

Some Rare and Unusual Books

Some Rare and Unusual Books At the Texas Book Festival in Austin this year I encountered some quite unusual books. Lining shelves and laid out on tables were books on everything from aardvarks to zymurgy (the branch of chemistry that deals with the process of fermentation, a fact that everyone should know). I mean to tell you, it was simply mind-boggling to discover what Texans are writing about and Texas presses are publishing. Now, here are three unusual books that one university press has available: The Development of the Rudder; Ships’ Bilge Pumps: A History of Their Development , 1500–1900; and Those Vulgar Tubes. Of these I found the last one the most enticing. I have really never given so much as a mote of thought to the evolution of rudders or the history of bilge pumps between 1500 and 1900 (or any other time period), and I doubt that anyone reading this has, with the possible exception of former colleague Phil Parotti in the SHSU English Department, who was a naval officer and may well have had full Naval Academy courses on rudders and bilge pumps. He has never mentioned these subjects to me. Ah, but Those Vulgar Tubes—now, that’s a book that ought to be well worth the reading. The subtitle is External Sanitary Accommodations aboard European Ships of the Fifteenth through Seventeenth Centuries. We’re talking toilets here, “the downward trunking through which effluvia was directed into the sea.” Effluvia. Now there’s a euphemism for you. Can’t you just hear your wife say, “Honey, scrape that dog effluvia off your boot before you come in this house!” The title Those Vulgar Tubes is purported to have come from a poem in which a ship’s chaplain begs to use the officers’ inside water closets instead of the “vulgar tubes” the common sailors were required to use. It seems an illsuited subject for poetry, but who am I to say? As soon as I can get my hands on this book, I’ll review it for you. Sounds fascinating. In the booth of a rival university press I discovered an unusual book titled Freshwater Mussels of Texas—big at 8½ 3 11 inches, 224 pages, with 144 color 44 Things Literary, More or Less plates and 110 in black and white. Mussels may have been around in the world’s fresh waters for four hundred million years, and they may have been responsible for the founding of San Angelo, but I have never known the subject of mussels to come up in any conversation I’ve heard since the age of thirteen or so. When I was a boy, we used to go down on the Tombigbee River near Columbus (Mississippi) and track mussels in the clear water around sandbars, and this we did for two reasons only: one, to see who had the biggest mussel when we got through—when do boys ever turn down an opportunity to compare mussels?—and two, to pry them open and use the meat as trotline bait for catfish. I can see the potential demand for books on the mammals of Texas, on dinosaurs, insects, bats, forts, Indians, weapons, sports legends, politicians, houses of prostitution, etc., but mussels? The authors go into the anatomy of the mussel and discuss its natural and commercial contributions; they examine its distribution, habitat, and spawning practices (every successful book these days has a little sex in it—you can imagine how this one must sizzle). It took three men to get it done (the book, that is, not the spawning), all scientists and researchers, and you can just bet that this book was funded with federal and/or state grants. Ranking right up there with the mating process of fruit flies, it’s a subject ready-made for garnering grant funds. All right, I’m sure this book makes a contribution to the world of science, and I apologize if I appear not to be taking it seriously. It might be interesting to give it as a Christmas gift, just to see whether anyone can top the joke; or you might lay it on your coffee table and get a pool going on how long it will accumulate dust before being opened. And think about how it could prepare you for parties. You know how people are always coming up and saying, “Wow, I’ve just finished this really terrific book called A...