My “Lost Summer” of Reading

A couple of years ago, not long after I fell in love with my first Kindle e-reader, I went on a bit of a self-imposed scavenger hunt.  I decided to search for and re-read about a half-dozen books that I first read years ago during what I have come to refer to as my “lost summer” of reading.  It took a while but I eventually located all of the books I remembered… except one.  

For a while I did a lot of fruitless searching on the internet whenever I had a chance. It didn't help that all I had to go on was the book’s title – “Dimension A”.  Unlike the other books I remembered, I couldn't recall the author or much of anything else that might aid my search, including any character names or even much of the plot.  In fact, the most prominent thing I could recall was it was the first time (actually probably the only time) I had ever seen the word “treacle”.  Being something of a vocabulary nerd, I recall having to look up the definition and even now I have to laugh when I realize “treacle” is the one thing that immediately comes to mind when I think of this book, even decades later.

Eventually I gave up searching.  Without any more information to go on, my chances of ever finding it were slim to none.  I figured that the book was long out of print and as a result would probably never be found in hard copy let alone e-book format anyway.  My scavenger hunt would likely remain incomplete and I must admit the thought saddened me a bit.

When I couldn't find a job in 1976, I spent a glorious, long and lazy summer sitting on the screened porch of my family’s cottage near Lake Erie, reading almost every science fiction book the nearest town’s small, store-front library had to offer.  I had just finished my sophomore year in college and I had aged-out of the city’s summer youth program and in spite of filling out an application for just about every retail business in the local area, I remained unemployed that year.

The tiny branch of the Erie County library system wasn't very big and the sci-fi section occupied only two small shelves near the floor that probably held a couple dozen books each, if that.  But every week when my family went into town for groceries and other supplies, I slipped away to that little piece of heaven to borrow another new book.  Then, on days when my sisters and I weren't baking like lizards on the beach or swimming in the lake, I could usually be found on that screened porch, reading my latest treasure.

Even now when I close my eyes, I can still recall sitting in a corner, camped out in an old whitewashed fan-backed wicker chair that was probably at least three-times older than I was that summer.  It creaked pleasantly every time I shifted for it had been painted and repainted countless times by that point, at least once by me.  The handmade, careworn and flattened patchwork cushions, pieced and sewn out of scraps of rich, jewel-toned antique velvet and satin dress remnants, always exuded a faint musty smell from being packed away nine months out of every year, no matter how much they were aired.  With my long, lanky legs tucked up underneath me, or stretched out on an equally ancient footstool, I whiled away many an afternoon, getting lost in a book while the gentle lake breezes wafted and whistled through the porch screens and rustled the leaves of the trees surrounding the cottage.

The books themselves were standard library fare – linen hard covers with glassine dust jackets that crinkled and crackled when you opened them, Dewey Decimal System stickers plastered on their spines, and little cardboard envelopes in back holding the lending cards which the librarian dutifully removed, stamped and filed away after carefully scrutinizing my library card like a passport.  In a way, those books were passports… to other planets, other worlds.

I credit my love of reading in general and my love of science fiction in particular to a somewhat lonely childhood and a half-dozen, young adult serial books handed down by my Indiana cousins.  While my contemporaries were reading Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries, I was reading the adventures of Tom Swift Jr., boy inventor.  Yes, I was a nerd at an early age.  

But that summer I was introduced to some of the grand masters of the genre: Ben Bova, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.  I read Bova’s “The Winds of Altair”, “Exiles Trilogy”, “As on a Darkling Plain” and “The Weathermakers” which still remains one of my favorite, fun sci-fi novels to this day.  Together with the meteorology class I had taken that spring, “The Weathermakers” fueled my life-long love of clouds and severe weather.  I also read Asimov’s novelization of “Fantastic Voyage”, Clarke’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” and Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Wind in the Door”.  

And “Dimension A”…

Although I had resigned myself to the fact I would never find this book, it was never far from the back of my mind at times.  Then not long ago on a whim, I did a search on Goodreads and actually got a hit.  There wasn't any information listed that would give me any idea if this was the book I was looking for but I figured there couldn't be that many novels with that title.  More importantly, the hit gave me the author’s name, L.P. Davies, and from there a search on Amazon actually turned up a selection of re-sellers who had physical copies of the book.  A few of them had posted pictures of it and even after thirty-eight years, I recognized the cover immediately.  

I was ecstatic and for the princely sum of $8.50 plus shipping I quickly ordered a copy. When it arrived and I actually held it in my hands I almost couldn't believe it.  

My newest acquisition is a first edition printed in 1969; a young adult novel written by a Welsh author who apparently enjoyed moderate success in the UK.  It has a linen cloth cover and cloth taped spine, with stitched pages and the same glassine dust jacket from my memory that crinkles and crackles when I open it and it has a familiar musty book smell.  And although the Dewey Decimal System sticker has been removed, there is still a little cardboard envelope inside the back cover that once held a library lending register card.  My copy of “Dimension A” once graced the shelf of a library… perhaps even a small town, store-front library like the one from my past.

My literary scavenger hunt for the books on the reading list of my “lost summer” is finally complete.

I am not entirely sure why finding this specific book was so important to me.  The very fact that I remembered so few details about it surely meant that it is likely not a great work of fiction and yet, somehow it left an impression on me that seemed far more than simple nostalgia.  Having passed the “50 yard line of life” a few years ago, I have found that as I get older I have generally gotten less nostalgic, not more so.  The family summer cottage was sold years ago when my aging parents could no longer afford the property taxes or take care of it and neither of my sisters nor I had the desire or means to take on that burden.  The whitewashed wicker chair was painted yet again but in a different color and now graces the sun room of my sister’s home but the satin and velvet patchwork cushions, made from old Victorian era dresses worn by my grandmother and great aunt, finally succumbed to age and dry rot and had to be thrown away.  I felt a passing twinge of regret each time but life moves on.

But for all of that, I often remain oddly nostalgic over favorite books I've read.  I still have those six Tom Swift, Jr. books my cousins gave me and have even added a dozen or more volumes from the series to my collection.  When I retire I plan on re-reading them all.  I have other books from my childhood that I have preserved and treasured, some of them defaced with my crude, early artwork before I was old enough to know better and learned to treat a book with more respect.  Perhaps it wasn't “Dimension A” in particular but the collection of books as a whole which drove me to keep looking for it.  Like certain songs which act as signposts in our memories, forever fixed to seminal events in our lives, I have come to realize that this book or collection of books marked a significant milestone in my life.  

I refer to that time as my “lost summer” for one simple reason; although I was technically an adult in 1976, I was not gainfully employed until the following year, and although I have held many jobs since then, I have been working steadily ever since.  But that summer, I had no responsibilities other than a few family chores, I had no bills to pay, no schedules to keep.  I passed the long, lazy summer days with nothing pressing or important to do and not a care in the world… except to decide which book to read next. For three wonderful, glorious months, time seemed to stand still as I stood poised on the threshold between being a child and becoming an adult.  I have never enjoyed the same degree of freedom or luxury since and I still look back at that period as one of the happiest times of my life.

So, as I sit here preparing to re-read this last missing piece of that “lost summer” I have to wonder; will it be as good as the book I remember?  Probably not, but then that was never the point of my search to begin with.  As the old adage goes, it’s not about the destination, but the journey.  And for better or worse, for a week or so in 1976, “Dimension A” was a welcome traveling companion accompanying me on the journey to the person I have become.  It’s part of my personal history, less than a paragraph, perhaps no more than a footnote in the story of my life.  So I will settle back with a cup of tea, revisit and get reacquainted with an old friend after almost four decades.  It will be a sweet reunion.

And perhaps that was really the whole point of my literary scavenger hunt all along.


UPDATE:

Now that I have finished reading "Dimension A" I have to say it was an interesting experience.  To begin with, I was surprised by how little of the story I remembered beyond the general premise, including the rather surprising ending, but much of it looked familiar and started coming back to me the further I read.

A scientist and his assistant go missing from a locked laboratory.  With the aid of an old friend and scientific colleague, the two young men searching for them manage to piece together the method of their disappearance and are accidentally pulled into the same alien world, another dimension in the multi-verse adjacent to our own.  Searching for answers and a way home, they rise to the challenge of surviving in the face of unknown threats from all quarters, in an inhospitable and sometimes hostile and deadly environment while trying to make some sense of everything around them.  In the process they find both missing men and learn the truth of this alternate world they have stumbled into and the threat it poses to Earth.

Although it is not uncommon for me to be reading more than one book at the same time, I deliberately waited to finish the book I already had in progress before starting "Dimension A".  I also made it a point to camp out in my favorite chair, either in the living room or in our sun room.  I wanted to take my time, relax and savor this book in an effort to recapture the feelings of that magical summer on the screened porch of my family's summer cottage.  Obviously it wasn't the same experience but then I didn't expect it to be the same.  Too many years have passed, too much has changed in my life since then.  I have grown considerably older and hopefully wiser.

Was "Dimension A" great fiction?  To be honest, not really.  I would probably give it three or four stars.  Keep in mind however that it is a product of its times (written in 1969) and possesses a bit of the same stiff reserve of its British/Welsh author. But it was and still is an imaginative young adult story that in many ways reminds me of "Tunnel Through Time" by Lester DelRey, another childhood favorite of mine, and "Half Way Home" by Hugh Howey.

Was it as good as the book I remember?  Most definitely yes, or at least I enjoyed it as much as when I first read it.  Perhaps I am being overly nostalgic here but it was a great pleasure to read this book again after so long, especially since I remembered so little of it.  In many ways it was almost like reading it again for the first time.   And although I had forgotten much of the intricacies of the plot, I had the same visceral reaction at the two surprise "reveals" at the end, enough to remind me of why I enjoyed it so much the first time around.

People often say "You can't go home again".  But sometimes, if you're fortunate, you can come pretty close to it just the same.