‘twas the morn’ before Friday, when throughout the fine town, gathered book-reading women, deliberating their nouns

Translated, that means on Thursdays in Boulder City, a group of women, Becky, Boni, Deb, Elizabeth, Evelyn, Kathy J, Kathy S, Katie, Krishun, Laura, Lisa, Lori, Nancy and Vicki, who belong to a book club, congregate, and bring to life persons, places and things recalled from the books they’ve read. I’m honored to be a member of this book club.

We don’t stand around a cauldron, circling our pointed, crooked fingers into the pot, cackling while we’re infusing our nouns with slightly sinister salty spells attempting to invoke inanimate objects to jump from the pot. We’re a dignified group, a Dignified Book Club, so we sit down while we do this. On comfortable recliners and couches.

What we really do, is get personally involved with the books we read. Each month, one of us hosts the meeting, and we discuss the book chosen the previous month. Sometimes we love the book, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes, books fascinate us so much that we want to know more about our nouns. We want to know more about the person or persons in the story, we want to see the places three dimensionally, and learn more about the “things” that the stories revolve around.

You’ve probably spotted DBC members at some point gawking, googling, scouring, sniffing, muttering, mumbling and scrutinizing, however, contrary to the symptoms displayed, we don’t all have medical conditions, we’re just researching the nouns in our books.

We devour books about authors, painters, aviators, politicians, animals, wars, cultural customs, scandalous stories, heartbreaking stories, uplifting stories, classics, fiction, non-fiction, books depicting life in America, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and the list goes on. We don’t have limits on the subject or length of the books. We’ve read books that take only a couple of days to finish, we’ve read books that are so big we hire handmaids to carry them for us.

Some of us have traveled to our nouns creating a special connection with these “places” by visiting the homes of Ernest Hemingway, Frank Lloyd Wright’s home, and made humbling visits to Normandy Beach, Israel, and Colonial Plantations in the South. Once again, the list goes on.

Quite possibly, the books we enjoy the most are the ones that get us thinking about history, which is where this article comes in. We recently read Big Red by John Haase. The book, published in 1980, is purportedly a fact-based fiction novel that takes place in the days during the building of Boulder Dam. We wanted to know if the stories in the book were factual, so we set out to ask a few long time Boulder City-ites firsthand about their recounting of the early days.

Enter Ila Dave-Clements, Patty Sullivan, Theda Franklin-Cox, Lori Merrell, Pete and Denny Mayes-the long-time Boulder City residents we corralled into spending an evening chatting with us. They gave their opinions on Big Red, they told stories of long ago, stories recalling life in Ragtown, stories about Boulder City dating back to the 30‘s up to present day. We DBC members were treated to an abundance of insight and knowledge that wafted throughout the room all evening like little puffy trails of smoke rings from Santa’s pipe. Written history manifesting into living history makes you want to shout the F-word, Fascinating!

History abounds in and around Boulder City. Visit our local museum and the surrounding museums where loads of information can be found. Check out the archives. Talk to people who’ve been around. Explore.

The great thing about history is that it’s always happening. Whether it gets written into a book or passed on from generation to generation, history is history, and it’s important. It isn’t only the famous names and places that need to be remembered, we need to pass on our own histories. Write down your thoughts and memories, tell your family stories, hang on to photos. Preserve history by planting your words of today, for tomorrow. For the new generations, keep your stories coming.

You never know, one day your nouns could end up in our cauldron. Hehe!