Our Kind of Reader, Post 2; WITH: Our Kind of Donlanesque* Tea Drinker

JF Ptak Science Books LLC

 
In my Livres qui Rient collection are a number of pretty unusual book  images, including this lovely bit (from a 1910 or so issue of The Illustrated London News), the post-Victorian ultra-lux book-holder manufactured by Mr. J. Foots & Son of London.  Actually I substituted the word "book" for "foot", not that an entire-body portable sauna named a "Foot Bath" isn't smirky enough, and, anyway,  both have a double-"o" in the middle so they are nearly the same word, though not really).  I love that this guy is absorbing whatever that pipe (watch out!) is sending his way with a flourish in his hair, a tight and tidy smile on his face, and one free hand which snakes up and out of the hot box to steady his book and turn a non-sweattied page. 

It seems that the Foots expanded their horizon from Sweating Books to their enormous, live-in Tea RV.  The only thing missing is a motor (advertised though not evident), but, since this fellow is English and of course a lover of tea, then as long as his caffeine delivery system is laid out properly in front of him and settled by a fine white linen, it really doesn't matter if he goes anywhere at all.  Right, Jeff? 

*(Donlanesque is an uncommon reference synonymically related to Lincolnesque.)

Comments

[Jeff]

Donlanesque is an elegant adjective, and I approve of its application to a tea chair. I could only have dreamed of such accoutrements. I once made an adjective out of your surname, but when I said it, I thought Ptaky might not please you. Regarding the Book Bath Cabinet ... do you recall at the Staten Island YMCA the women's exercise room? They had a cabinet like that, which we always wanted to try but were never permitted, as well as all those shaking machines that were supposed to reduce thighs and tummies without effort on the part of their owners. There were shaking belts and a rolling drum with knobby rollers all around it, and you held onto the handles and lowered yourself onto it. Remarkable to think it was ever considered effective. I wonder now if reduction was ever the point. Anyway, I'm feeling sore today, and the tea chair looks like a capital idea. I think, though, that the self-propelled feature merely means that the occupant can easily propel it, not that it's motorized. Too bad.

[Rick]

You know, John, Jeff actually has one of those book-bath contraptions hidden in the "not for public view" area of the library building in Salida. He has had a dickens of a time getting funding for its maintenance and has asked the governor of Illinois for creative advice as to raising the needed money.

Last I heard, Jeff had only heard back from the Feds.

[John F. Ptak]

Jeff: many thanks for your brain squeezins on PTAK, but as it stands my name has legendary status among Trekies everywhere as the most unutterable and untranslatable of Klingon curses. And I do sort of remember The Special Room for Ladies, sorta, or at least the sit-downy wooden rollers one, none of which made any sense and which were all vaguely scary. And you're right of course about the self-propelled thing.

[John F. Ptak]

RICK: someone from Salida wrote to say that they saw Jeff tooling around town in the Book Sweater! That was a surprise, as I thought that he'd surely be the one for Self-Propelled TEA RV. Maybe he had in the back of his mind the pilot for Star Trek where the pre-Kirk Captain of the Enterprise appears in a buggy (with a blinking light!) that looks a lot like this one. Maybe it was all a dream...