Saturday, February 9, 2008

MEME: Page 123

I was tagged by gautami tripathy and marg for this particular meme.

The rules of this particular meme are:
1). Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages)
2). Open the book to page 123
3). Find the fifth sentence
4). Post the next three sentences
5). Tag five people


I had The North Shore of Home by Frank Ledwell out the other night and never got it put away, so it is handy to me here on the computer. And I am going to cheat a bit, because the first sentence on the page is the one I was looking up, because it refers to my husband's family. I should describe this book a bit. Ledwell, a former poet laureate on PEI, is from the same little community as my husband, and also taught us both an English course at university. This book of essays and poems all relate to his hometown.

Here's the line, legitimately from page 123, but not the fifth sentence:

He began doing a mental census of the community , starting at the Midgell bridge and moving east along the highway. There was old Lester and then John and Mary MacAulay - their brother Archie marrying late, just escaped the fate by a whisker - and Ben and Joe and Marion MacInnis; he even counted in Leo and Tina Smith who, althought married, he figured were too late getting there to have children, and the same with Watson and his missus, and so forth. He had already counted two dozen bachelors and a dozen spinsters when he stopped.

This passage is from the story Jimmy Paddy Charlie, which refers to the habit of people in eastern PEI of calling people by their first name, followed by their father and grandfather's name, in order to keep straight family lines and people with the same last names. It's no wonder people knew who all were related in the oder days, they were called by three generations everyday.

I tag whoever wants to play, and especially anyone who hasn't done a meme before. This is an easy one to try for your first one.

3 comments:

  1. I see you've already done this. If you want to do it again:

    123 You've been tagged.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ledwell's writing has a great deal of appeal to me - just reading the sentence you shared. Would you recommend this book for me?

    ReplyDelete
  3. chris - I was on base, you can't tag me. hee

    booklogged - His writing is drenched in Island atmosphere. I can't imagine it would be easy to get this book in Utah. We actually have two copies of this, I could send you one if wanted. Email me your address and I can snail mail it to you. raidergirl3 at gmail dot com. I bought one for Ron for Christmas one year, and also for my grandparents, which I got back after they died. We certainly don't need two.

    ReplyDelete

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