Thursday, May 01, 2008

Book-Bag Diaries

Dear Readers,

The Genealogy Dept. at the Little Rock Library asked me to write something about my travels in and around the world and seeing that by BookBag had traveled most places with me for the last 27 years I thought why not call my stories the "Book-Bag Diaries". The nice Lady that I was talking to Thought the Idea was great and asked me to Write something for one of the Newsletters or Some-such Published papers they had to offer, at this writing I have no memory of the name of the Publication in question.

I had shelved the idea always meaning to write something or the other about it sooner or later, but digging around in the boxes and wire baskets from my last move which was in May of 2006 I started smelling old memories and things I thought I never knew I had still.

Here comes the kicker to this all.

Ages ago when I bought my Bookbag, at the UALR University of Arkansas at Little Rock's Bookstore, I saved the tag promising a Lifetime Warranty on my newly purchased BookBag by JanSport. I liked the top-hatch loading style of it and that it had a leather bottom and seemed to be able to handle all sorts of things, plus my books, and was light enough so that it was not a ton of books to carry. I filled out the little card, and dropped it in the front pencil pocket and meant to mail it in one of those days.

About 3 years ago I figured, because I could no longer find that hunk of paper that I had since then stuffed into a tiny zipper baggy and again thrown into the front pocket, only to have it up and disappear on me, that it was gone for good.

Just tonight when my mind was on other things. Things like old Poems I had forgotten I had even written, Drawings and Paintings in my many Sketch books, backpacking supplies rolled into various sizes for travel in wet, or dry, or snowy climes, general junk that has either rusted away to nothing or old bags of unknown seeds collected in the wilds of my travels. People around me also bothering my peace and quiet attitudes, by constantly worrying about anything and everything and just bothering the heck out of me, like knats on a balmy summer afternoon. I pull out of a bag my Climbing rope. 30 feet of soft but very strong rope that I have had almost as long as my BookBag. Reminding me that there it is, my Lifetime Warranty is gone for good.

I get back in the bedroom after showing my Dad my climbing rope that I had just found and there on the bed cover is a little zipper bag.

Folded to the point that you can see through the card stock paper at all of the creases was my BookBag's Lifetime Warranty.

What more can you hope for, a Lifetime Warranty?

Where does yours Hide?

My BookBag's is on a shelf, and so is mine. But on a different shelf, between the pages of a book, and in an empty tomb, and on that blood stained Cross.

Don't let life get so complex that you forget that the simple things in life sometimes take a while to be found again after you have misplaced them in all the clutter you have created.

Charles and his Old and Worn BookBag.

1 Comments:

Blogger Charles Edward Owens Jr. said...

I think but can not be totally sure that the little card are dead now, in 2014 I found it yet again, the time I was cleaning off that shelf a bit, but either way if it was there when the little fire happened this year it is likely burnt to a crispex, or gone poofy!, I don't mind, the Back pack was not in the fire zone, is still in fit and proper shape for something that was bought in 1981 and is in still good working order, they don't make my model anymore, But mind you, mine is still making it's treaks and takes me everywhere it wants me to carry it. It lik,es to see the sight let me say that, it's been to more new faces than I have, after all it sees everything looking backwards off my shoulders and I am sure it has more than 50 million more friends than I do or will ever have. It might even own half the internet by now, after all, it's been talked about all over the places I have been and well, it has a load's better sense of time and space than I do. LOL.. Laughs Out Loud but a bit more softly than I could and a bit more long than I could, which means it's still laughing as I hit send here.....

9:44 PM  

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