Salsam asks about our reading habits, which got me thinking, where did my book-reading habit come from?
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My mom read newspapers and magazines, never books. When I cleaned out my late brother Peter’s Florida house a few months ago, I saw very few tomes, mostly about his profession: managing cities. The same was true for my youngest brother, Pat, who also died this past year, a successful sales manager.
My engineer dad read books, especially in retirement, which was cut short by sinus cancer just as he was developing a line of bakery products which he would sell at local farmers’ markets. He had piles of bread baking volumes. And he loved big idea books like Kenneth Clark’s Civilization. Funny, though, he didn’t read novels.
The first “real” book I read was Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman in 1959, when I was ten. My Catholic Grade School, Sacred Heart, belonged to a paperback book club. I remember looking forward to the days when our teacher would distribute the books we had ordered. I was attracted to adventure, sports, and the Hardy Boys mysteries.Still, today, there’s always a detective story on my nightstand.
Around this same time, my school adopted the SRA reading program. Do you remember a box like this in a classroom?
During a reading period, students would select color-coded short stories and progress up a reading ladder by answering questions. The only particular I recall is my green ceiling, two or three colors below Ann Kruse and John Roach, the class geniuses.
That solid, but not excellent, academic identity has stuck with me through fifty years of higher education on both sides of the teacher’s podium.
In my mind, I was never a natural scholastic fit, like the Ann Kruses of the world, always the guy who could stick in the scholarly Major Leagues if he worked harder than anyone else.
Instead of taking a million ground balls at third base, somehow, unbeknownst to my conscious mind, I figured out that reading would be my ticket to success on the intellectual infield.
Eight years after retirement, I’m still at it. Next January, I’m going to teach a Life Long Learning seminar on Bob Dylan in San Miguel, Mexico, where Rebecca and I spend a winter month. While I’ve been to a bunch of Dylan concerts, I don’t really know very much about him or his music.
My son, Ben, reintroduced me to Bob when he was 14 and I was 50, and we’ve attended seven concerts together. In case you’re wondering, more than 2,000 books have been written about the guy who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016. I’ve got a little catching up to do.
That’s why I’m out on the practice diamond each morning before other players show up, taking extra fielding, hoping I can keep this ruse up for another year.
Because, you see, there’s always an Ann Kruse trying to take my job!
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