The Reindeer Keeper

It was the Christmas when I was seven that I found a desk under the tree with my name on it. I’d smelled the shellac when hurrying down the front stairs. I didn’t know what it was until I was told my grandfather used something called shellac when making the desk out of pine. It had two shelves on the right side and a single drawer in the front. When I opened the drawer I found a pad of lined paper with a No. 2 sharpened, yellow pencil. From that moment on I considered desks to be magical. My best friend back then was an only child. I loved running through our side yard to go play with her. Once inside the pale yellow house with a back stairway that took us up to her bedroom, we spent time not only in her room but spare rooms full of stuff as well. Going from one room to another we’d have to walk by a desk sitting in a nook all by itself. It was my friend’s desk. It was a roll top desk and whenever I could, I’d sit in the chair and pull the top back and be taken away by the ...

Just the smell of a crayon brings me back to my childhood growing up in the country. There's nothing like that specific aroma of colored wax-rolled and shaped and wrapped in a paper-covering a lighter shade than the crayon itself. Crayons were like best friends. They were always near. My cousin and I used them when playing school in our chicken coop clubhouse. Our pretend students drew some great pictures with their crayons even when the crayons were just broken pieces. That didn't stop some of their artwork from being chosen to hang by thumb tacks on our bulletin board-the bottom of a cardboard box. At home I always had crayons in my desk ready when needed. Besides drawing, coloring in coloring books was so much fun. We had a JJ Newberrys and a Woolworths next to each other in our downtown back then. Sometimes in the summertime my cousin and I would pack up our purses and walk the country road to go shopping. Newberrys had great over-sized coloring books. I think I bought ...