The Iceberg Hermit

 I have been doing more reading in the past few weeks than normal. I typically polish off about a book per week as I casual consume content while going to sleep. Two things contribute to the increase in my intake. First, I have been reading more upon waking and avoiding my phone.  Reading time is still screen time since I am on my Kindle, but I enjoy it more than doom scrolling through social media and the news. They are much the same thing these days. Maybe they always were. 

Second, I have been disinterested in my typical diversions. I have cut down my comic book intake significantly. It isn't zero yet, but I am only reading about a dozen books by issue with half than many picked in in trade paperback. I am still enjoying video gaming, but I try and limit my engagement there to when I have time to focus on the game since I grind away at Final Fantasy most of the time. Taila and I counted it up today. I am on my 10th game with at least 12 more to go in the series. 

For short breaks in routine I have just been grabbing a book. I have always subscribed to the idea that good writers are great readers. I am not a great reader anymore. Those days of polishing off a novel a day or every other day are likely gone for good. Still, enjoying a book and change per week feels good for me which is what it is all about. 

I have been more inspired and motivated to work on my own fiction. I have been working on a twist on the stranded on a deserted island survival story. I figured that it would do me some good to read survival adventure stories. I had not read Robinson Crusoe since I was a boy. I was surprised when the genre sparked memories of an old favorite book of mine. I knew my copy had finally aged to the point that I had to get rid of it. After all, it had travelled around the world with me and I had it since it was gifted to me in the sixth grade. 

The story of getting the book is slightly interesting. I picked up a few things I valued from that sixth grade year. It gave me my all time favorite boyhood crush. It gave me one of the best friends I have ever had. It gave me memories of my friend Steve being tossed face first into a flag pole by an angry girl and the very audible memory of the pole letting off a fantastic gong. It also gave me The Iceberg Hermit. 

I had started sixth grade as a transfer student. My Mom did not want me in the inner city schools where I had struggled for the first couple of years of elementary school. She worked out a transfer for me in second grade and I had less trouble. To this day, I do not recall what the trouble was, but I know she threatened to physically harm a principal. 

I didn't do well at my transfer school. I was preoccupied with social studies which is to say I wanted to be cool, popular, and have a girlfriend. Eventually, Mom gave in that the transfer wasn't helping and off to Christenberry Middle School I went. I liked it. It was a few blocks from my house rather than a 40 minute ride every morning and afternoon. Bless my Mom for being willing to travel back and forth with me during the transfer. 

Christenberry was wonderful. I made friends. I learned some things. I had leather shop which I have wanted to revisit ever since. I wish it had stayed open for my entire middle school experience. That was not to be. In fact, Knox County closing Christenberry changed the road map of my life when I look back at it. 

When the school closed at the end of sixth grade, kids zoned for Christenberry were bussed to Whittles Middle School. It wasn't super far away. I could easily walk from one to the other even now. I didn't enjoy Whittles as much as I did Christenberry. During my 7th grade year there was a shooting and my parents made the decision to get out of the inner city. I hated the move to the country for years. In fact, I didn't appreciate the area until I was in my late 30s. 

As Christenberry was shutting down it got a very thorough cleaning because the school was being torn down. Kids took a lot of stuff home. I took home a good stack of books the library was getting rid of. My favorite of these would be The Iceberg Hermit. 

The book was published in 1974. If I am not mistaken it is set in the mid 1700s. It is a story of a teenage boy who becomes shipwrecked and survives on an Iceberg. He makes friends with a polar bear and eats a lot of whale blubber. 

I don't know what about this story captured my imagination so completely between ten and eleven years old, but I could tell you a lot about this book all these years later. I only remember reading one time for sure though I may have revisited it in my early twenties. I certainly have memories of thumbing through it around at that time. 

I remember purging some old and tattered books from my collection My copy of The Iceberg Hermit was yellowed with age when I got at as a proper school library book should be. I want to smell that musty book smell and imagine all the generations of kids who have carried the book around enjoying it or hating it in various degrees. There is such a magic in that. 

After 25+ years of moving with me from house to house and passing through customs at least twice my copy of The Iceberg Hermit was done for. I dropped it sadly in the free bin outside McKay Used Bookstore and tried not to feel saddened at the loss. I didn't really think about it much for a few years until I started working on this latest story. 

I was surprised to find that I could not buy a digital copy of The Iceberg Hermit for Kindle. There is a copy available for reading on archive.org, but that is not the same thing. I would need to purchase hard copy. 

It felt appropriate that the copy I found was a former library book. 

It has the appropriate shelving label on the spine. It has clearly been read enough to develop some cover curl. There is a taped due slip on the back inside cover though I was disappointed to note that it had to notations of having been checked out. Once I finish my current Richard Stark novel I will dive into this with great nostalgia.