“Hey mom, what’s an arachnid?”
“I’m busy icing this cake. Get an encyclopedia and look it up.”
And we did. Boomers, that is. Those of us fortunate to have a set of encyclopedias in our homes looked it up. If not, we went to the school library the next day.
Printed encyclopedias have largely gone the way of passenger pigeons. Old sets now languish on E-bay. Good Will stores refuse them.
After a run of 244 years, Encyclopedia Britannica ceased printing books in 2010. The storied company went completely digital. They had released all their door-to-door salesmen back in 1996, so the handwriting was on the wall.
Today’s world is fast changing. One click on Google provides mountains of information on most any subject. But Boomers look back and fondly recall the days of encyclopedias and encyclopedia salesmen. It was a world of 10-cent popcorn at the movies, moms in aprons, 45 records, penny candy, Schwinn bikes and milkmen.
In the 1950s, having a set of encyclopedias on the bookshelf was as common as having a Nash Rambler in the driveway or a Zenith TV in the living room. The prices varied, but an average set of 24 volumes could cost upwards of $300 and more, and in the 1950’s, that put quite a stretch on a family budget. But no one paid cash up front for encyclopedias. Payments were stretched out over several years.
But if you didn’t have a set of encyclopedias, you knew that you were not truly in the “middle class”, the ultimate goal of every American family. So Americans bought lots of encyclopedias throughout the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, including World Book, Britannica, Claxton, Collier’s, Americana, Funk and Wagnall’s and many others.
And it was an exciting day when they arrived. The leather bound books had a unique smell with crisp, glossy pages and each volume was crammed with a thousand pages of information. There was something comforting and reassuring to see those beautiful books on the shelves and to be able to pick one up on occasion and read – whether it was a great American novel or interesting information in an encyclopedia.
Under “American Literature” in a World Book encyclopedia, for example, the names stand out like a heckler at a baseball game –Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, H.L. Mencken, Sinclair Lewis, Emily Dickinson, Pearl Buck, Henry Thoreau, Emerson, Steinbeck, Wolfe, Hemingway, Faulkner, London, Twain, Melville, Salinger, Wilder, Frost and others.
Hey, if you have an encyclopedia handy, you can look it up.