“All right. Then we shall pray all the more that God shows you why.”
“Danke. If you see Rachel, tell her to call me on Saturday. She can use this number. It’s a cell phone Dad bought me to use. Or the landline. She has that number already.”
“Oh. All right.”
“Say hi to Daadi for me. I love you.”
“We love you too, Tyler. Farrywell.”
With that call taken care of, I wrote a letter to Rachel telling her about the airplane flight, this new house that seemed to do everything itself, my dad’s opening up to me about my mother, and Brady’s strange attitude toward me.
After that, I put the letter in the mailbox and took Frisco for a walk. Dad had said to bring along a plastic bag, as it was considered littering to leave your dog’s mess on the sidewalk or in someone else’s yard. Two more for the list.
Dog mess must be picked up.
There are special plastic bags manufactured just for that purpose.
Out on the sidewalk, I noticed I was not the only one walking a dog and clutching a little plastic bag. I said “Good morning” to several others who also came prepared to take their dogs’ waste home with them. Most responded with just a nod, polite but cool.
Back at the house, I made a lunch to take with me for the day, dug around for a phone book to look up libraries, and then headed out in Liz’s Honda to go to the nearest one. I got lost twice but finally made it. By eleven, I was inside the Newport Beach Public Library, roaming the shelves. It had been a while since I had immersed myself in researching something that didn’t have to do with buggies.
I consulted many books on Viking history, getting my fill of the seafaring warriors’ knack for raiding and piracy and taking things that didn’t belong to them. I read as much as I could stomach for Brady’s sake and then decided to move on to something else more benign, just to clear my head.
After stacking to one side the books I would check out for Brady, I returned to the shelves in search of the photography section. Once I found it, I was surprised to see how big it was. I perused the offerings, and though some of the books looked too dry and technical and boring to slog through, others seemed quite intriguing. I gathered together the most promising ones, carried them back to my table, and dug in.
My intention was to familiarize myself with the basic mechanics of picture-taking, but I was soon immersed in the history of photography instead. Except for the problem of nosy, camera-snapping tourists, the topic never came up much in the Amish community, so my knowledge base was pretty much nil. Now I realized how fascinating photography was, especially when I saw how long it had been around. The first photographic image was captured in 1825, but the story of pictures on film actually began in ancient times, with the creation of a primitive device known as a “camera obscura.” Variations on that device persisted for centuries and were eventually coupled with photo-sensitive compounds, which allowed the images seen through the camera obscura to be captured not just with the eye but on paper. I followed along the timeline step by step and was up to 1837 and the invention of the daguerreotype when I realized my stomach was growling. Glancing up at the clock, I was surprised to see that between my Viking research and these photography books, I had been reading for four hours straight. Time to go. There was a bagged lunch waiting in the car, calling my name.
I stacked my top choices, both Viking-and photography-related, and carried them up to the counter. I asked the librarian for a card, intending to use my father’s address. She said they couldn’t do that without proof I lived there and suggested I get a temporary, out-of-state card instead. Thanking her for her help, I handed over my driver’s license so she could take care of it.
“Pennsylvania, huh?” she said as she typed in my information.
“Ya. Have you ever been there?”
“No, but I understand it’s beautiful.”
I smiled, assuring her that it definitely was.
Our conversation continued as she kept typing, and soon she was urging me to visit the ocean while I was here.
“You can’t come this far west and not see it at least once,” she said, softly but enthusiastically.
I agreed, asking how to get there and saying that I knew it wasn’t far, not just because I’d checked on a map, but because I could smell the salt in the air.
She handed back my license and my new card, and then she gave me directions to the “beach” of Newport Beach. I thanked her for the help and headed out, deciding I would go there now.