[427TJ]

I'll sometimes go to Powell's Books in Portland (Oregon) on airline layovers and read old books for a few hours and maybe buy a book for my library. One day I was reading an early 1960s book on the history of the Model T and the book was inscribed,

"To (name forgotten), Christmas 1964, I hope this book brings you hours of joy in the years to come. Love, Mom and Dad."

It suddenly hit me that the person to whom the book was inscribed was probably dead and that many of the used books in Powell's, a huge place, had once been in someone's home library and had captured their interest, at least for some perioid of time. I imagined the son, 45 years earlier, tearing the Christmas wrapping paper off of the Model T book and excitedly seeing it and saying it was the book he had asked for. I looked around and felt like I was in an orphanage with all those old books slowly getting older. I looked through more books and found a few more inscriptions and I could just imagine where each book's original owner might be now. Yeah, weird. I've been to Powell's once since that day and I felt very different when I walked in and saw all the used books. Ghosts of the past.