Monday, January 09, 2006
My Little Library
Two years ago, my wife Linda bought a 50's looking hutch and put it in the living room. We began to put a few decorative items on it and in it.
Without any particular plan in mind, I have decided to put into the hutch a series of books from my childhood. Having the time to do it because your mother is off at Sears working, I've decided to write and tell you about the collection of books. So here goes.
Let me start by telling where I'm getting the books. Some of them are actually mine, that is they are roughly 50 years old. Others are books I've bought to serve the purpose of books I had 50 years ago.
As of now , I've not arranged the books in any particular order.
The first is actually four Little Golden Book titles - The Shy Little Kitten, Gene Autry, Puffy Plays Baseball, and Bugs Bunny and the Easter Party.
- The Shy Little Kitten - my Dad bought me this book and a cap at Weingaten’s grocery store. I had just got a burr haircut. The book was my idea. The hat was his. Burr haircuts were a fad. That was why I did it. I let it grow back and got a burr only once more in my life - when I joined the Corps of Cadets at A&M. You can see where I've put my name in the book and on the second page is a word circled. I did not know it. The word is paws. Someone, likely, has put stickers on the book.
- Gene Autry- I can't recall anything about it other than I was in the 1st grade when I got it.
- Puffy Plays Baseball is actually a Little Owl Book. I don't remember any of the circumstances around this but I do remember I liked the book. The story is about a small, unimpressive train that does something really important. In summary, what I've always thought about myself.
- Bugs Bunny and the Easter Party. The story in this book always scared me.
- (The Christmas Story – is missing. It was given to me by me Granny Jones.)
The second collection of books are paperbacks. Mostly books I bought at school through Weekly Reader Books and a from another very interesting source – a flour sack.
- The Picture Story of Davy Crockett came out of Gold Medal Flour. The book was a prized possession. I my mind, the book left open the possibility that Davy survived the Alamo. At that time, it seems possible to me that Fess Parker was Davy Crockett. Surely, Disney’s movie was ambiguous on the topic. I signed the inside cover. My Mother put our address (without the city) and phone number on the title page. I wonder, if the book became lost, would someone call me? What if I lost it in a town other than Port Arthur.
- The Merry Adventure of Robin Hood also came out of Gold Medal. The book had no particular meaning to me when I got it. For may years I did not read it.
- The Young Reader’s Book of Presidents and Ripsnorters and Rib Ticklers are both books I bought in the 3rd grade after Christmas. I know because my name is in longhand – I learned this in Louisiana in the Fall of the 3rd grade – and I first started buying books in the 3rd grade at DeQueen School.
All of these books are from the fourth grade – Weekly Reader Book program. Let me tell you how that worked. The teacher would pass out a selection list one day in class. One would have several days to decide, check which books one wanted, and bring the money from home. Then, several weeks later, one would come back from lunch and there the books would be , on one’s desk. It was great. The anticipation was terrific. And finally, there they would be, ready for reading. That brings up two related topics.
You will not find The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad among the books. I ordered it, but never got it. On the last day of school, I reminded my teacher for the umpteenth time of that fact. She gave me Treasure Island as a replacement, and told me to have a nice summer. It was years before I read the classic Treasure Island. Good, but no Cyclops.
Also, while in the 3rd grade, I joined the Science Fiction Book Club for the first time. The was not done at school. The allure was “free books” if you agreed to by more. Two of the first books I got were Triad (three unrelated novellas) by AE van Vogt and Journey to the Center of the Earth by Juke Verne. Both were above my reading level just in being able to say the words, but I struggled through them. My sister Janet and I read Journey to the Center of the Earth out loud to each other , trading off chapters. This happened in the summer after the third grade . Janet stayed with us several weeks that summer. We did not really know each other before then, but got along like best friends. Is that what blood relation does? Another thing we did that summer was pose for a portrait. One can see the resemblance. I’m 8 in the photo and she is 13. A little pudgy, but cite – her not me. She would again come to stay with us in Texas when she was 19 or 20 to get a quick – as compared to Louisiana- divorce from her first husband. At 19 she was quite a looker. Blond hair, blue eyes, small Jones nose. I recall she was kind of wild. I saw her again when she was about 30. That was in the 70’s on here soybean farm in Wisner, La. Now she is in her 60’s. I’ve not seen her or had much contact in 30 years.
Now back to the books. I don’t have them all. Missing is the Ghostly Trio and the Thinking Machine, two of my favorites. But I do have:
- Skeleton Cave – my first multi chapter story I ever read.
- The Buccaneer – a movie based book. I did not see this movie until 30 years later.
- The Wizard of Oz – I read this before I saw the movie. Our teacher read us another of the books – I don’t recall which one, but I’ve never read any of them.
- Snow Treasure – A WWII story that claims to be true.
- Trial by Danger – I think it is a story similar to A Light in the Forest
- Codes and Secret Writing – I’ve never read this book, but I’ve used some of the codes.
Now comes books from a little later, maybe 5th grade.
It’s Amazing – a book of science facts
Road Race – I bought this because I decided I needed to start being a teenager and get interested in teenager stuff. Another WDJ characteristic – learn to act as expected, as if one’s life is a part in a play. You know, William Shakespeare thought this as well as me. But he thought it up first.
Here are more books –
Mexican Road Race – One of the Black Tiger Stories. The Black Tiger is a car. A racing car. Each of the books is set at a famous racing venue. The Mexican Road race is the book I remember best from the series. I am reminded that I sometimes think I’m dyslexic. I read every word in a book. In the Black Tiger series I misread Mercedes (Team Mercedes was always portrayed as the bad guys.). I read Mecredes. Wrong. I actually made a bet with a boy from next door named Boscoe over the correct pronunciation. He said it correctly. But I never admitted my mistake. You see, Boscoe was not very smart. We all thought his IQ was low. Even so, he knew a Mercedes when he saw one.
Another word I had trouble with was “abyss.” A word found frequently in Journey to the Center of the Earth. Janet did not know the word either, we both mispronounced it as Abay – and never bothered to look it up. We did know what “phenomena” was either. Vern used that word a lot. So Janet and I participated in the well known human phenomena called intellectual laziness. We read on and marched into unexplored abyss of our young lives, reading of the book as if we had no need of dictionaries to illuminate the darkness. (Chuckle.)
The Story of Davy Crockett - This is a hard bound book, a birthday present from my mother. This book leaves no doubt, Davy died at the Alamo.
The Wheel on the School – Our fourth grade teacher read this to us. My copy is one I just bought from Amazon. I recall the story is about a group of Dutch children who hunt for a wagon wheel to put on their school so storks can build a nest on the wheel. This book has a connection to Holland, which we were studying at the time and another book that I‘ll get to later. Speaking of studying about Holland, I also recall studying Switzerland but not Spain or England or France or Germany or Norway. I wonder why. How do teachers and school districts make decisions like that.
And now, two text books, one of which started this whole phenomena (there is that word again) of finding books from my childhood.
If I Were Going - I looked for this book for years until I found a bookshop in Galveston that would find old books upon request. When I got it, I read it again immediately. I had for all the many years I was searching for the book, told you that it was about an older couple that brings two children (turns out to be one Alice and Jerry) on a great vacation trip to Europe. I was shocked to learn that Alice and Jerry did not go on the trip. What a rip off! I was also shocked at my reaction. Why should I care? I originally read the book in the first half of the third grade while living in Louisiana. I remember reading books out of the traveling parish library – the Book Mobile. We had no TV. Heck, Louisiana had very few TV stations in those days. My cousin, who lived close by, had the TV I watched. Usually only on Saturday mornings. I think the lack of TV is why I read so much. I also collected stamps. If I Were Going was not our classroom textbook, but something I found in the classroom and asked if I could borrow it. Notice the tie between stamps and If I were Going? The tie is travel. I’ve always like to travel. Some day I’m going to Europe, and Alice and Jerry are not coming.
The New Times and Places – This actually was my fourth grade textbook. This is another book that took years to find. Decades to find. I found it using a combination of flea market browsing and internet searches. In the textbook there is a story I liked. The story is about a family that makes decisions based on finding a buckle in a squash. That methodology - makes decisions based on finding a buckle in a squash – is a phrase I’ve used over the years when someone asks a question, maybe even a serious or intelligent question about why someone has done something. I would say, maybe they found a buckle in a squash. Indicating, I did not know, and maybe there was no good reason. Anyway, if one searches the internet for “buckle in a squash”, one finds that is from a story – The Huckabuck Family : and How They Raised Popcorn in Nebraska and Quit and Came Back, by Carl Sandburg of all people. Do I really need to say that finding buckles in squashes is how they did it? Anyway, while looking through textbooks at flea markets, I learned that The New Basic Reader Series was the textbooks for which I was looking. So to find my book, all I had to do was find a New Basic Reader Series book that contained The Huckabuck Family. An easy internet search. That story is in the New Times and Places textbook. That is the same series that starts with Dick and Jane. Well, duh! I finally found the book on one of our antiquing trips. Also in the book is a Dr. Suess story – Bartholomew and the Oobleck. One never hears about some of Dr. Suess’s stories any more. In my school books, there were always stories from colonial America. And this was always a topic of study for a “unit.” A “unit” was a time period of several weeks in which we studied something. One of my favorite units in fourth grade was Greek Mythology ( see my website for more information about the second time I studied Greek Mythology.) I was chosen to be a part of the team that made the Mythology frieze. That is something like a mural. I was chosen because I was almost considered the best student in the class. Very outspoken in class. This level of performance continued until the 7th grade. At that time I went through a traumatic personal event – the suicide attempt by my Dad. After that, I was usually an A-, B+ student. I was quieter, harder to get to know, less outspoken, concerned that someone could find out about my background. Not until much later did I learn to be more open about myself again.
Pagoo – Newest addition to the library. My copy is new. Older copies are considered collectable and are hard to find. Thank goodness for Amazon. For many years I looked for this book as “Pago”. I know it was not “Pogo.” I finally found it with Google. The story is about a hermit crab. My attraction to the story is that is a natural science story. If you want to learn about hermit crabs, read Pagoo. As a kid, I ate up natural science books. Besides Pagoo, one of my favorites was a Time Life Books publication called The World We Live In. Very good, very interesting. In my latter years, I’ve become more of a history reader. This reflects more of a questioning about why are people like they are, individually and collectively over how does nature work. I read Pagoo as part of the summer reading program at the Port Arthur Public library. The program worked like this, at the beginning of the summer, you got a chart from the librarian to track progress. The chart could be a tree with leave. Then as you checked out , read, and returned books over the summer, the librarian would put an X on the leaves or otherwise indicate on some chart that you had read a certain number of books. No prize, no award, no certificate.
The last three books I’ll write about are two Cub Scout Manuals and my Boy Scout Manual. All these were my manuals.
Boy Scout Handbook – This version was the first rewrite of the handbook after WWII. The one I have I bought at Boy Scout Headquarters which was in the Bluestiens Department Store in downtown Port Arthur. This would also be where one would buy the uniform, badges, pins, etc. I did not get far in the Boy Scout program. I did not like the group I was in, associated with the KC, and so I just lost interest.
Wolf Cub Scout Book – Unlike the Boy Scouts, I loved the Cub Scouts. The first den I was in was in 2nd grade. The den was made up of friends from school. I did all the credits like I supposed to and the book is full of places where my Dad or Mom signed off on the Elective credits. One of the electives is Cooking. I did all the credits on that. A detail I recall is one of the items I cooked was the famous Jones salad, a peach half filled with mayonnaise – actually Kraft miracle Whip. Another elective I recall was Indians. The required credit Indian Dance took place at the Sam Houston Elementary Cafetorium before a large crown of proud parents. Man is that Americana or what!
Bear Cub Scout Book - Upon returning to live in Texas from one of our stays on a Louisiana farm, I joined a cub scout den with the guys from DeQueen school, 3rd grade. There are fewer things signed off on because after a brief stay in Texas, we went back to Louisiana. Back to the woods where my best friend really was my dog.
Well, that’s it. No more books in the library as of now. I hope you enjoyed this and will remember it. Some day you may run across a box of books, seeming unrelated to each other. Instead of wondering, what are these books. You will know. This is My Little Library.
Two years ago, my wife Linda bought a 50's looking hutch and put it in the living room. We began to put a few decorative items on it and in it.
Without any particular plan in mind, I have decided to put into the hutch a series of books from my childhood. Having the time to do it because your mother is off at Sears working, I've decided to write and tell you about the collection of books. So here goes.
Let me start by telling where I'm getting the books. Some of them are actually mine, that is they are roughly 50 years old. Others are books I've bought to serve the purpose of books I had 50 years ago.
As of now , I've not arranged the books in any particular order.
The first is actually four Little Golden Book titles - The Shy Little Kitten, Gene Autry, Puffy Plays Baseball, and Bugs Bunny and the Easter Party.
- The Shy Little Kitten - my Dad bought me this book and a cap at Weingaten’s grocery store. I had just got a burr haircut. The book was my idea. The hat was his. Burr haircuts were a fad. That was why I did it. I let it grow back and got a burr only once more in my life - when I joined the Corps of Cadets at A&M. You can see where I've put my name in the book and on the second page is a word circled. I did not know it. The word is paws. Someone, likely, has put stickers on the book.
- Gene Autry- I can't recall anything about it other than I was in the 1st grade when I got it.
- Puffy Plays Baseball is actually a Little Owl Book. I don't remember any of the circumstances around this but I do remember I liked the book. The story is about a small, unimpressive train that does something really important. In summary, what I've always thought about myself.
- Bugs Bunny and the Easter Party. The story in this book always scared me.
- (The Christmas Story – is missing. It was given to me by me Granny Jones.)
The second collection of books are paperbacks. Mostly books I bought at school through Weekly Reader Books and a from another very interesting source – a flour sack.
- The Picture Story of Davy Crockett came out of Gold Medal Flour. The book was a prized possession. I my mind, the book left open the possibility that Davy survived the Alamo. At that time, it seems possible to me that Fess Parker was Davy Crockett. Surely, Disney’s movie was ambiguous on the topic. I signed the inside cover. My Mother put our address (without the city) and phone number on the title page. I wonder, if the book became lost, would someone call me? What if I lost it in a town other than Port Arthur.
- The Merry Adventure of Robin Hood also came out of Gold Medal. The book had no particular meaning to me when I got it. For may years I did not read it.
- The Young Reader’s Book of Presidents and Ripsnorters and Rib Ticklers are both books I bought in the 3rd grade after Christmas. I know because my name is in longhand – I learned this in Louisiana in the Fall of the 3rd grade – and I first started buying books in the 3rd grade at DeQueen School.
All of these books are from the fourth grade – Weekly Reader Book program. Let me tell you how that worked. The teacher would pass out a selection list one day in class. One would have several days to decide, check which books one wanted, and bring the money from home. Then, several weeks later, one would come back from lunch and there the books would be , on one’s desk. It was great. The anticipation was terrific. And finally, there they would be, ready for reading. That brings up two related topics.
You will not find The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad among the books. I ordered it, but never got it. On the last day of school, I reminded my teacher for the umpteenth time of that fact. She gave me Treasure Island as a replacement, and told me to have a nice summer. It was years before I read the classic Treasure Island. Good, but no Cyclops.
Also, while in the 3rd grade, I joined the Science Fiction Book Club for the first time. The was not done at school. The allure was “free books” if you agreed to by more. Two of the first books I got were Triad (three unrelated novellas) by AE van Vogt and Journey to the Center of the Earth by Juke Verne. Both were above my reading level just in being able to say the words, but I struggled through them. My sister Janet and I read Journey to the Center of the Earth out loud to each other , trading off chapters. This happened in the summer after the third grade . Janet stayed with us several weeks that summer. We did not really know each other before then, but got along like best friends. Is that what blood relation does? Another thing we did that summer was pose for a portrait. One can see the resemblance. I’m 8 in the photo and she is 13. A little pudgy, but cite – her not me. She would again come to stay with us in Texas when she was 19 or 20 to get a quick – as compared to Louisiana- divorce from her first husband. At 19 she was quite a looker. Blond hair, blue eyes, small Jones nose. I recall she was kind of wild. I saw her again when she was about 30. That was in the 70’s on here soybean farm in Wisner, La. Now she is in her 60’s. I’ve not seen her or had much contact in 30 years.
Now back to the books. I don’t have them all. Missing is the Ghostly Trio and the Thinking Machine, two of my favorites. But I do have:
- Skeleton Cave – my first multi chapter story I ever read.
- The Buccaneer – a movie based book. I did not see this movie until 30 years later.
- The Wizard of Oz – I read this before I saw the movie. Our teacher read us another of the books – I don’t recall which one, but I’ve never read any of them.
- Snow Treasure – A WWII story that claims to be true.
- Trial by Danger – I think it is a story similar to A Light in the Forest
- Codes and Secret Writing – I’ve never read this book, but I’ve used some of the codes.
Now comes books from a little later, maybe 5th grade.
It’s Amazing – a book of science facts
Road Race – I bought this because I decided I needed to start being a teenager and get interested in teenager stuff. Another WDJ characteristic – learn to act as expected, as if one’s life is a part in a play. You know, William Shakespeare thought this as well as me. But he thought it up first.
Here are more books –
Mexican Road Race – One of the Black Tiger Stories. The Black Tiger is a car. A racing car. Each of the books is set at a famous racing venue. The Mexican Road race is the book I remember best from the series. I am reminded that I sometimes think I’m dyslexic. I read every word in a book. In the Black Tiger series I misread Mercedes (Team Mercedes was always portrayed as the bad guys.). I read Mecredes. Wrong. I actually made a bet with a boy from next door named Boscoe over the correct pronunciation. He said it correctly. But I never admitted my mistake. You see, Boscoe was not very smart. We all thought his IQ was low. Even so, he knew a Mercedes when he saw one.
Another word I had trouble with was “abyss.” A word found frequently in Journey to the Center of the Earth. Janet did not know the word either, we both mispronounced it as Abay – and never bothered to look it up. We did know what “phenomena” was either. Vern used that word a lot. So Janet and I participated in the well known human phenomena called intellectual laziness. We read on and marched into unexplored abyss of our young lives, reading of the book as if we had no need of dictionaries to illuminate the darkness. (Chuckle.)
The Story of Davy Crockett - This is a hard bound book, a birthday present from my mother. This book leaves no doubt, Davy died at the Alamo.
The Wheel on the School – Our fourth grade teacher read this to us. My copy is one I just bought from Amazon. I recall the story is about a group of Dutch children who hunt for a wagon wheel to put on their school so storks can build a nest on the wheel. This book has a connection to Holland, which we were studying at the time and another book that I‘ll get to later. Speaking of studying about Holland, I also recall studying Switzerland but not Spain or England or France or Germany or Norway. I wonder why. How do teachers and school districts make decisions like that.
And now, two text books, one of which started this whole phenomena (there is that word again) of finding books from my childhood.
If I Were Going - I looked for this book for years until I found a bookshop in Galveston that would find old books upon request. When I got it, I read it again immediately. I had for all the many years I was searching for the book, told you that it was about an older couple that brings two children (turns out to be one Alice and Jerry) on a great vacation trip to Europe. I was shocked to learn that Alice and Jerry did not go on the trip. What a rip off! I was also shocked at my reaction. Why should I care? I originally read the book in the first half of the third grade while living in Louisiana. I remember reading books out of the traveling parish library – the Book Mobile. We had no TV. Heck, Louisiana had very few TV stations in those days. My cousin, who lived close by, had the TV I watched. Usually only on Saturday mornings. I think the lack of TV is why I read so much. I also collected stamps. If I Were Going was not our classroom textbook, but something I found in the classroom and asked if I could borrow it. Notice the tie between stamps and If I were Going? The tie is travel. I’ve always like to travel. Some day I’m going to Europe, and Alice and Jerry are not coming.
The New Times and Places – This actually was my fourth grade textbook. This is another book that took years to find. Decades to find. I found it using a combination of flea market browsing and internet searches. In the textbook there is a story I liked. The story is about a family that makes decisions based on finding a buckle in a squash. That methodology - makes decisions based on finding a buckle in a squash – is a phrase I’ve used over the years when someone asks a question, maybe even a serious or intelligent question about why someone has done something. I would say, maybe they found a buckle in a squash. Indicating, I did not know, and maybe there was no good reason. Anyway, if one searches the internet for “buckle in a squash”, one finds that is from a story – The Huckabuck Family : and How They Raised Popcorn in Nebraska and Quit and Came Back, by Carl Sandburg of all people. Do I really need to say that finding buckles in squashes is how they did it? Anyway, while looking through textbooks at flea markets, I learned that The New Basic Reader Series was the textbooks for which I was looking. So to find my book, all I had to do was find a New Basic Reader Series book that contained The Huckabuck Family. An easy internet search. That story is in the New Times and Places textbook. That is the same series that starts with Dick and Jane. Well, duh! I finally found the book on one of our antiquing trips. Also in the book is a Dr. Suess story – Bartholomew and the Oobleck. One never hears about some of Dr. Suess’s stories any more. In my school books, there were always stories from colonial America. And this was always a topic of study for a “unit.” A “unit” was a time period of several weeks in which we studied something. One of my favorite units in fourth grade was Greek Mythology ( see my website for more information about the second time I studied Greek Mythology.) I was chosen to be a part of the team that made the Mythology frieze. That is something like a mural. I was chosen because I was almost considered the best student in the class. Very outspoken in class. This level of performance continued until the 7th grade. At that time I went through a traumatic personal event – the suicide attempt by my Dad. After that, I was usually an A-, B+ student. I was quieter, harder to get to know, less outspoken, concerned that someone could find out about my background. Not until much later did I learn to be more open about myself again.
Pagoo – Newest addition to the library. My copy is new. Older copies are considered collectable and are hard to find. Thank goodness for Amazon. For many years I looked for this book as “Pago”. I know it was not “Pogo.” I finally found it with Google. The story is about a hermit crab. My attraction to the story is that is a natural science story. If you want to learn about hermit crabs, read Pagoo. As a kid, I ate up natural science books. Besides Pagoo, one of my favorites was a Time Life Books publication called The World We Live In. Very good, very interesting. In my latter years, I’ve become more of a history reader. This reflects more of a questioning about why are people like they are, individually and collectively over how does nature work. I read Pagoo as part of the summer reading program at the Port Arthur Public library. The program worked like this, at the beginning of the summer, you got a chart from the librarian to track progress. The chart could be a tree with leave. Then as you checked out , read, and returned books over the summer, the librarian would put an X on the leaves or otherwise indicate on some chart that you had read a certain number of books. No prize, no award, no certificate.
The last three books I’ll write about are two Cub Scout Manuals and my Boy Scout Manual. All these were my manuals.
Boy Scout Handbook – This version was the first rewrite of the handbook after WWII. The one I have I bought at Boy Scout Headquarters which was in the Bluestiens Department Store in downtown Port Arthur. This would also be where one would buy the uniform, badges, pins, etc. I did not get far in the Boy Scout program. I did not like the group I was in, associated with the KC, and so I just lost interest.
Wolf Cub Scout Book – Unlike the Boy Scouts, I loved the Cub Scouts. The first den I was in was in 2nd grade. The den was made up of friends from school. I did all the credits like I supposed to and the book is full of places where my Dad or Mom signed off on the Elective credits. One of the electives is Cooking. I did all the credits on that. A detail I recall is one of the items I cooked was the famous Jones salad, a peach half filled with mayonnaise – actually Kraft miracle Whip. Another elective I recall was Indians. The required credit Indian Dance took place at the Sam Houston Elementary Cafetorium before a large crown of proud parents. Man is that Americana or what!
Bear Cub Scout Book - Upon returning to live in Texas from one of our stays on a Louisiana farm, I joined a cub scout den with the guys from DeQueen school, 3rd grade. There are fewer things signed off on because after a brief stay in Texas, we went back to Louisiana. Back to the woods where my best friend really was my dog.
Well, that’s it. No more books in the library as of now. I hope you enjoyed this and will remember it. Some day you may run across a box of books, seeming unrelated to each other. Instead of wondering, what are these books. You will know. This is My Little Library.
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It's the little asides amidst all of the information about the books that tells me more about you than I knew before.
# posted by 
: 5:50 PM
: 5:50 PM
Who is the author of Trial by Danger? My 27 year old loved the book and lost it. I can't find the author's name anywhere to get another copy.
Thanks
Michelle
Petagoatjunction@hotmail.com
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Thanks
Michelle
Petagoatjunction@hotmail.com
# posted by : 1:43 AM
: 1:43 AM << Home
