I was brought up during an era when milk was delivered to the door. It came in thick glass bottles with gently rounded corners, wide-mouths, and paper lids that were removed with a tiny tab.

When the milk was gone, the glass bottles were washed and put in a metal box suspended between the outside and inside walls of our house. The box had a small inside door that was locked after the bottles were inserted, and a metal outside door that opened onto a path leading to the backyard. When the milkman came, he could deliver or pick up the bottles through door in the wall.

Lily of the valley and lilacs grew along this path. It’s my guess that they have always been among my favorite flowers because they bring back such pleasant memories of my childhood. One of those memories is of Mr. Biggie, our milkman. I date the decline and fall of civilization to the day that the first architect drew the first blueprint of a house without including a delivery door for milk.

Our household back then consisted of two parents and five children. Every year before Christmas, my mother drew up a list of our teachers and carefully decided who would get what. Mr. Berger got a wool muffler. Miss Winters got nylon stockings. Mrs. Sutton got a silk scarf. Although he was clearly not a teacher, Mr. Biggie also made the list. As with the others, he was never given anything as impersonal as money. It had to be something useful, like warm socks or white undershirts. Mr. Biggie could not exactly be categorized as a friend, but he was an inextricable part of the inner workings of our home. On cold days, he was invited in for coffee; on hot days, for a cold drink.

One afternoon when my mother was off doing mother-things and Mr. Biggie and I were sitting in our breakfast nook, over two glasses of lemonade, he told me about one of his favorite novels, The Robe. All these years later, he is in my mind because last night I saw the 1953 movie made of that book on TV. It starred Richard Burton and Jean Simmons, and it was terrific.

I was brought up Jewish, which means that I was taught about Moses dividing the Red Sea, Lot’s wife becoming a pillar of salt, and Noah pairing couples on his ark like a biblical Match.com, but incidents relative to Christianity were not high on my reading list. I knew nothing about Last Suppers, Judas Iscariot, or Romans feeding Christians to lions. The Robe, by Lloyd D. Douglas, described those events against a thrilling background of clashing swords and racing chariots. Its characters included Marcellus, a Roman centurion who wins Christ’s robe in a game of dice at the foot of the cross and then suffers agonies of guilt for having ordered his crucifixion; Demetrius, a Greek slave who converts to Christianity and ultimately becomes Marcellus’ friend; and beautiful Diana who, though promised in marriage to the evil emperor Caligula, is in love with Marcellus and will follow him anywhere ... even to a martyr’s death.

The Robe had everything. Religion. Loyalty. Violence. Sex. I read it; I loved it; and I think back fondly on Mr. Biggie’s eagerness to share his enthusiasm with me. He was not trying to convert me; and doing so would never have crossed his mind. Instead, on a hot day over a cool glass of lemonade, he and the daughter of a customer were taking out a few minutes to exchange thoughts and discuss books.

My friends and I did a lot of that back then. I went to church with them. They came to synagogue with me. I helped them to decorate their Christmas trees. They joined us at Friday night dinners when my father recited the blessings over the bread. It was an innocent time. Ideas were rife; new and old ones spread like kudzu in a southern garden. One day you were a capitalist. Next day you were a communist. Your Great Uncle Ned offered you a job after school in his shop, and bang, you were a capitalist again. Monday you wanted to be a jet pilot. Tuesday a missionary. Wednesday an atheist. Thursday, you would decide to be brain surgeon or Broadway star. Friday, you scorned your parents because they had ordered a new sofa while people were starving in China. Saturday you were angry with them because they wouldn’t buy you a used car.

Yet over, under, and around the intellectual tumult of growing up, there were always certain immutable axioms: you made your bed every morning. You helped with the dishes every night. If you needed money, you babysat or went to work at the Chinese restaurant in town (I worked after school in the darkroom of a photographer). You mowed lawns, raked leaves, typed envelopes. You endured adoring grandparents, and went to the nursing home to visit senile Aunt Gwyn. You didn’t steal, cheat on tests, or lie about anything major. You cleaned behind your ears, thought your thoughts, suffered just about every mandatory adolescent anxiety, and grew up none the worse for having been subjected to arbitrary, extraneous, or unacceptable ideas. In fact, you grew up better, because you had learned to think and to make up your own mind. To have a mind that you could make up.

To my great dismay, years after some religious nuts tried to ban J. K. Rowling’s marvelous Harry Potter series because, supposedly, it promotes witchcraft (fortunately few paid heed to such idiocy), this marvelous author is now in the soup because she dares to opine that regardless of how many hormones one takes or body parts one lops off, there are, in reality, only two sexes. Male and female.

And because she has the courage to state the obvious, she is being vilified, demonized, and savaged by many … including those who crafted careers and fortunes out of her books.

If Mr. Biggie were alive today, he would have loved Harry Potter. A struggle of good against evil? … how could he resist? He and I would be chatting in my breakfast nook about the young wizard’s adventures, about the rewards of friendship, about J. K. Rowling’s courage, and about her sense of humor. There are many laugh-out-loud passages in her novels.

And after reading the last book in the Harry Potter series, Mr. Biggie would no more have felt obliged to experiment in sorcery or ride a broom than, after reading The Robe, I felt that I had to convert to Christianity. I also read the Communist Manifesto without becoming a communist, Lord of the Rings without becoming a hobbit, and Watership Down without becoming a rabbit.

Books are an odyssey and an adventure. If we are lucky, there are people in our lives with whom we can share those adventures – preferably over cool glasses of lemonade … without feeling the need to hide in our attics, banish friends from our lives, or move out of the country, lest we become contaminated by new and/or disagreeable (to us) ideas.

And if we are really, really lucky, we have a Mr. Biggie.

Copyright © Shelly Reuben, 2024. Shelly Reuben’s books have been nominated for Edgar, Prometheus, and Falcon awards. For more about her writing, vibasit www.shellyreuben.com.