He was to find some “geezers” and ask them what their favorite book was as a child.
So, he asked Larry. And then he asked me.
Both of us suddenly felt the effects of many years trodding heavily across our faces. But, for Jacob we sent our now wandering minds back in time.
Larry has vivid memories of riding his bike to get his favorite books. He rode several miles across the town of Glendale to the old, even then, public library in the town square.
The library still stands there today, some 50 years later.
He recalls checking out a series of books that were conveniently marked with a red star, which indicated that boys would like them. Some of the ones he remembers are stories about Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Jim Bridger, Jim Bowie, Kit Carson, and Wyatt Earp.
He also read Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer but they didn’t have red stars to mark them.
He would carry these home on his bike, riding with one hand, and read them at night with a little night light that hung on his headboard. When his mom came in to tell him to turn off his light and go to sleep he would use a flashlight to read under the covers.
He remembers too, always stopping for a popsicle on the way home from the library, at the small Tang’s market on the corner which had his favorite banana flavor for just a nickel.
My favorite children’s books of the many I love will always be the ones I read aloud to my own children on long car trips and to the young teenaged students in my classes every year. At school we'd read for a few minutes each day before the bell rang.
My own daughters loved books, but my special needs students were not “readers” by nature. Sadly they had missed the literature of childhood.
I insisted on reading books to them, often under protest.
But one day as one class was dismissed, a wonderful thing happened.
My biggest, toughest, gangbanging kid stopped to whisper something to me.
With a “keep this to yourself look or bad stuff will happen," he said, “I like it when you read to us, Mz. Dub. It makes pictures come in my head.”
Indeed it does.
And they're pictures from your own mind too. Not supplied by Hollywood.
We read many of the classic books for young people in class, partly because they were such an important part of my life. I remember especially, "The Yearling," "Jungle Book," "Hatchet," "To Kill a Mockingbird," "The Cay," and "The First Four Years" from the Little House books." Yes, even those.
Life, and childhood, was very different for us as kids then it is for our grandchildren.
50 years of progress have made great changes. Not all of them for the good in my opinion.
Life was simpler and slower back then, for sure.
Now, kids spend more time with video games than with books, and often text message instead of talking face to face.
I remember, not long ago, one of our lovely granddaughters, sitting around a campfire with all of our family, camping on a beautiful beach in California. It was a gorgeous evening with the sun setting over the sea, gulls and pelicans diving, and all of us gathered close to see it.
I looked across the flickering firelight to see her absorbed in texting a friend back home a whole state away. She missed the moment as surely as if she hadn’t been there at all. What a shame.
Yes, things were simpler then. You could only be in one place at a time.
According to Larry though, life wasn’t always easy.
For example, haircuts were an exception to the "simpler back then," thing. Sometimes these were complicated.
Larry remembers getting a haircut in Galesburg, Illinois where his family lived when he was in the 2nd or 3rd grade. He had to get a haircut every two weeks just as I recall my brothers did. It always caused him a great dilemma.
You see, his mom would give him one dollar to pay for his haircut.
A buzz or a butch hairstyle, as we used to call them, cost only 75 cents. A regular boys haircut was much more fashionable but cost a full dollar.
Herein lies the dilemma.
Close by the barber shop was the Dairy Crème which had lemon phosphates for 15 cents.
Right across the street was the Maid-Rite shop which sold some sort of a loose ground beef sandwich with mustard, pickle, and chopped onion for a quarter.
And across to the left was a market that had bins of candy behind glass that sold for a penny or a nickel each. There were wax sticks with sweet juice in them, or paper ones with sweet and sour powder, jawbreakers, Boston baked beans, candy lips or cigarettes, and chocolate coins wrapped in gold paper among other wonders.
Every two weeks Larry had to decide whether to be stylish or satisfied.
He says that the Made-Rite was the usual winner.
And come to think of it, I’ve never seen a single childhood picture of him with anything other than a buzz.
He also remembers his old neighborhood back in the mid-west.
So many times today we don’t even know our neighbors.
In the summertime he remembers the entire block getting together in the one vacant lot to hold a fish fry.
The men in the neighborhood had gotten together to build a brick barbeque at the back of that lot. All the neighbors would gather to fry tubs of catfish, bass and whatever else was biting from the Mississippi river, some 60 miles away.
Larry’s dad and several of the other men would leave on Friday night after work and return by dawn on Saturday with at least one washtub full of fish.
One time, the men let Larry come fishing but he was too little, and was such a pest, running through lines, knocking down poles that they never took him again. They all had multiple lines and would sometimes pull in two big catfish at once.
Whoever didn’t go fishing had the job of cleaning all the fish while the rest of the men returned home to sleep for a few hours.
Late afternoon the families would meet in the lot, the women bringing lawn chairs, coleslaw, corn on the cob, beans and babies.
One of the dads who worked in the local lumberyard always brought a load of scrap wood for a bonfire after dinner.
Families and neighbors would sit for the evening, some of the moms carrying sleepy kids home to their beds after a while only to return to the fireside later themselves.
Fourth of July was another big summer event. Everybody packed a picnic and a blanket, leaving early in the day to get a good spot. They headed for Lake Story for a day of swimming and talk with friends and neighbors. That night the skyrockets burst over the still water of the lake giving everyone two shows for the price of one.
Larry also remembers his grandpa listening to the radio in his kitchen, to shows like Jack Benny and Boston Blackie. Not music, mind you but dramas and comedies. Once again the pictures were the ones you supplied from your head.
He remembers too, the very first TV his family owned. They were among the first in the neighborhood to get one and would set it up in the living room window on Saturday nights facing out so the neighbors could sit in lawn chairs to watch wrestling from Chicago.
And so, time marches on. Life has certainly changed in major ways.
Geezers like the two of us really notice the differences, sometimes with more than a little sadness.
TV is now a fixture in every kid’s bedroom. And sometimes a computer.
Often as not they watch by themselves, and the pictures in their heads are supplied by some stranger, often of questionable character and motive, instead of the ones that used to be supplied by their own intellect and imagination.
Technology has brought great changes, that’s for sure. Progress it's called.
Still, I’m feeling a little perplexed.
I think I’ll go read an old book and see if the pictures still come in my head. I hope so.
No comments:
Post a Comment