More Things

I grew up in a pretty much illerate family. There was a World Book Encyclopedia, a copy of Owen Wister's "The Virginian," maybe a copy of a Zane Grey novel, and the Merck Index. Our basement had a few old textbooks in a box. I grew up on comic books. They used buy three every week when they went to the grocery, one for each of us kids. I soon owned all three. My grandparents house around the corner wasn't much better, but they had a basement full of the last twenty years of Saturday Evening Post, and Look, and Life, and Popular Mechanics magazines, because they never threw anything away. In third or fourth grade, I had checked this book out of our little elementary school library and had it in my desk and proceeded to spill paint all over my desk and it. They made my parents buy it. It was still readable, but had big paint splotches on the cover and on some of the pages. This was the first book I ever owned. I hope it is still wandering around out there in some thrift store, or is in somebody's box in an attic. I just shipped off a Chinese novel to a friend in Florida not too long ago, that someone had obviously dropped in the bath while reading there. It was still readable, though a bit water marked. We need to take care of our wounded or disabled friends.