I stopped. I listened. I listened again. Must have been 25 years ago. Janet and I lived then in a house with a front door that was protected by little roof that jutted out and gave you a place to leave your umbrella, assuming you had an umbrella. The picture that emerges in my mind today includes the roof, which was shingled.
But I could be wrong about the details. Memory changes what I remember.
The way I remember it, though, there was the smell of fresh-cut grass. I had just come in from cutting the lawn when G.K. Chesterton nailed me. In those high and far off times, I ran rented audio books on cassette through a Sony Walkman. Books on Tape was the largest provider, a company since purchased and dismembered by Random House. There was a set piece that I could once recite as I have never been able to recite the Apostles Creed.
If the cassette jammed, I was to take it out of the machine and “slap it smartly against a hard flat surface.”
But enough of the setting. Chesterton articulated an idea that I have been feeding on ever since. So I stood there and played it again. And played it again.
I’m not at all sure that knowledge is power, but knowledge can certainly be a relief. Since then I’ve read the book. And read it again. Read more »
