for Phil

I can remember the ragman, walking down the alley with his refrain of “r-r-r-r-aaags, R-r-r-r-ags!” He came through the steep and pitted alley between the garages in my grandmother’s neighborhood, and collected clothing too worn to be given to charity or donated to family members. He had a cart, that I remember, and his pronunciation of the letter “R” was rich, almost foreign. The fabric lay stuffed in bags in his cart. Where did those rags go? When I asked my grandma, she said, “Good paper. Good paper is made from rags.” I learned not only where the rags went, but that there was an indisputable caste system in the world of paper.
This is perfectly appropriate, because now we have the bookmen. They come to campus about every six weeks – similar to the ragman’s scheduled wanderings down the alley – and they take our unused examination copies of texts. What do they do with them? Resell, to schools or other teachers.
They have a lancet window of time: a textbook company issues a new edition of a book every three years, making the previous edition obsolete. They used to do it more infrequently, explained the textbook rep – but the competitive market from used book purveyors is so intense, that to survive they need to reissue every three, or even every two years.
We part with our examination copies unwillingly or gladly: wary of letting go the example we could use for an exam, the favorite stories appearing in yet another edition; gladly: happy for an extra 10 inches by 7 inch space on our desks where the stack of books to be sold had sat. And we wait, sometimes months, for our favorite bookbuyers to show up. Many of us waited for Phil.
Phil was huge: wide face and wide grin, large stomach, and acres of appetite for knowledge. He talked of stories with the English teachers, formulas and applications with the chemistry teachers, historical parallels with present events with the history teachers. Each group swore he must have professional knowledge of its subject, arcane and broad levels. He did not simply buy books; he read them. The first time I talked with him, we discussed Kafka’s Metamorphosis, and I shared a comic book version that some of my students prefer. But Phil already knew Kafka’s themes and sorrows. He spoke with us as learner to learner, and when he did not come to buy books, we grieved.
Phil’s body had cancer. Phil’s spirit was finally set to wander even broader halls of books. Some of us refused to sell books to Phil’s wife and son for six months, waiting for him to return. His spirit walks our hallways, visiting schools in many cities, drawing us learning, reminding us of our community. “Phil was a builder of relationships,” says Phil’s widow. “That’s what he did best.” They link us: the delivery people, the ragman, the book buyers. Phil and his like made the circle complete.