A book about life, love, and relationships, and how we find the person we are meant to be with for the rest of our lives.
When four year old Meyer met five year old Joan, they had no idea that the two of them would be spending a lifetime together. Three generations of friends and family would help them celebrate the good times and help get them through the tragic times.
Excerpt
Find more excerpts on the Village Drummer Fiction website. Following is the start of Chapter One.
It was a warm June day. In the distance I heard a steam locomotive struggling up the grade from our town into Mt. Pleasant. We lived in a small Iowa town along the Mississippi river. Mom and I were walking into town. She told me that she had a surprise in store for me. We arrived at this place called the library. It was my first visit to the library. My four year old mind was amazed as we entered. I could see there were books in every direction! Now I loved books because my Mom was always reading stories to me since I was little. We walked over to a special part of the library that was just for kids. And it had books – lots of books – just for kids. They even had their own section on trains and planes and cars and boats! This lady, who was called a librarian, asked if I wanted to learn about steam locomotives.
My mother later told me that my courteous reply was, “Yes Ma’am, but also about cars and boats and planes.”
The librarian lady showed me where the locomotive books were and I was actually allowed to hold and look at the book by myself. AND SHE FOUND ANOTHER BOOK WITH PICTURES AND NAMES OF RAILROAD FREIGHT CARS!!! My Mom asked if I liked the books and I replied that I did. We then walked to the front of the library where the real magic took place. My young mind was amazed to find out that if my Mom presented this thing called a library card to the librarian, I actually got to take the books back to MY room and put them on MY shelf and I could read them as often as I liked!! And after two weeks (you may not believe this, but it’s true), if I took good care of the books my Mom said I could take them back to the library and the librarian lady would let me bring home MORE of her books!! I was sure I was the first four year old on my block that knew the difference between a reefer and a gondola freight car. If that wasn’t enough, that library lady sometimes read to us kids that summer. My Mom told my Dad that the librarian lady read such great adventure stories to us kids that you could hear a pin drop. Mom must have had great hearing because I remember desperately trying to hear pins dropping during story time but never did. One time a great adventure story was being read to us about a Mr. Toad. That was the first time that I noticed Joan...
She was entranced with Mr. Toad’s adventures as was I. She had sparkling blue eyes, curly blonde hair and a laugh I would describe as melodious when I was older. When the story time ended she came over and asked me what I was reading. I showed her the book about jet planes. She didn’t seem too interested. She showed me her book. It was called Dick and Jane. I laughed because my middle name was Rick which was almost like Dick. She pointed out that her name was Joan which was almost like Jane. So we laughed ourselves silly. We decided to name her book Rick and Joan. She read a couple of pages then I read a couple and we substituted our names for Dick and Jane. We giggled mightily each time we did that. We didn’t know it then, but we would look back on that first encounter as the first of many times we would read and laugh together.
Joan asked me what kindergarten class I was going into that fall. I told her that I wasn’t going to kindergarten that fall, as I was only four.
“OH!” she exclaimed. “I’m starting kindergarten this year. I can’t spend time with little kids.” And she walked away. That was really okay though, as Dick and Jane wasn’t nearly as interesting as Modern Jets and Rockets.
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