My Father’s Books

My father left around 350 books when he died. He wished they go to a small library in Texas. Unfortunately that didn’t seem to exist anymore. No problem, right? We could donate them elsewhere. Nope. The majority of his books are in Czech. There aren’t a whole lot of people in South Carolina who speak the language. I know only a handful. And I’m not one of them. What to do?
We decided to donate them to whoever wanted them and could pay postage.
I spent several weeks typing a list of all the books. They looked like bildungsroman type, books I wouldn’t read even if I could read. Most were old, early 1900’s with a few in the latter twentieth century and a few from the late 1800’s. I didn’t bother with the little symbols, the ‘v’s over some letters, dashes over others, I just typed. I am pleased to say I actually could read the title of one book: Where’s the beer? I’ve heard the word ‘pivo’ for a good part of my life.
List done I sent it to my sister. I’d handled the probate, she can handle finding homes for these books. She couldn’t. She had one taker, a gentleman from the University of Austin. He really wanted the books only he didn’t have the funds to get them and I wasn’t driving 1000 plus miles to hand deliver them.
So, for three years the books sat on the shelves. Now I’m moving in with my Mom and they needed to go. Somewhere. One Friday I decided to do another search. The University of South Carolina had Slavic Studies. And I know the dean. How about that. That was pretty much it for SC. North Carolina. UNC had Slavic studies including the Czech language! I typed off an email right away. That done I searched for more places, any college with Czech studies, any communities with Czech libraries. Needless to say there are not a lot in the United States.
Later that day I checked my email. I had not one, but two responses to my initial email. The first saying they were forwarding the email to another person. The other person saying they’d be delighted with the books. I did a happy dance.

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