Paperback Railroad

The Paperback Railroad

The older I get, the stranger my memories sometimes seem. They hover there, taking up precious storage space in a bio-computer that can barely retain the events of last week.  Their general outlines often remain bold and insistent, even though the fine details are blurry. One such memory I have dubbed “The Paperback Railroad.”

I think it was 1958 or ’59, because I was a tablehead at the time in the high school refectory, and something was going on that was making me nervous, because, after all, I was responsible for these lads on my table.  I had noticed it a couple of days earlier – the butter-cutters exchanging conspiratorial glances, cradling some kind of  furtive contraband in their laps, periodically sending mysterious messages to other tables. 

 “Okay, pass it up!” I demanded.

The second high kid feigned ignorance.  “Pass what?”

“Whatever you have on your lap.”

He held up his empty hands, grinned, and shrugged.

“You want to lose your mystery for a week?”

Glancing across the table at the other butter-cutter, he reluctantly brought up a little bundle of folded papers and handed them to the right-hand man.  When I opened them up, I recognized them as pages from a paperback book.  They were sequential, page 146 to 155, and well-worn.  I looked around the refectory and noticed that butter-cutters from several other tables were eyeing me suspiciously. 

“Okay, what’s going on?  What book is this and where’s the rest of it?”

The kid squirmed in his chair.  “I can’t tell you.”

I felt my tablehead-sphincter tighten.  “You better tell me!  Otherwise, maybe I’ll have to show this to Cat and let him deal with it.”

The kid flushed.  “Jeez, no!  You can’t do that.”

“Okay then, tell me.”

Gradually, he and the other butter-cutter spilled the beans. They were part of a paperback underground - about 15 guys who were reading unapproved novels. In order to minimize the risk of getting caught by the faculty, they would tear the books into 10 page segments and pass them around sequentially.  Once you finished your 10 pages, you passed them on to the next guy, and then waited to receive your next set of ten.  The idea was that, if you were in danger of getting caught, you could pop the pages in your mouth and chew them up before the faculty member could see what you were doing.    

Ingenious, I thought.  But also very dangerous in those days of Imprimaturs, Nihil Obstats, and mandatory approval of all books by the Reverend Librarian. Most of the books on our reading lists were musty, hard-cover tomes dating back to the previous century. Paperbacks were seldom approved, presumably because the flexibility of their covers implied a lack of moral backbone.  There were a few exceptions, like Miles Connolly’s Mr Blue, the Image Books series, or The Baltimore Catechism, but usually our approved reading matter was expected to reflect the rigidity of its cover.  A pulp paperback like the one being circulated in the refectory exuded depravity.

I tried to explain all this to my rebellious butter-cutters, but I’m not sure my words had any effect.   To this day, I don’t know if the paperback railroad ever got busted.  I do know I never finked on them; for, despite my own rule rigidity, I realized the butter-cutters were somehow preserving the seminary’s very tenuous connection with the First Amendment.  They were unlikely heroes, but heroes nonetheless.

If any of you have any memory of this subversive campaign, or better yet, were a part of it, please let me know.