Reminiscence: Childhood Reading Part 2

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Note: I organized the exploration of my memory in Part One of this reminiscence about my childhood reading in terms of places: libraries, the family living-room, and so on.  This time, I'll try to include recollections organized around the reading materials themselves.

1

I don't associate any one place, for example, with my parents' biggest splurge in supporting my sister's and my interest in reading.  I can't remember where we stored it, but we had a large, carefully organized, multi-volume collection of poems and stories for children called The Bookhouse books.  The series was organized so that literature the editors thought appropriate for children of different ages was available in separate volumes, youngest to oldest.

There were ten or twelve volumes, starting with one having lively, colored pictures and Mother Goose and Robert Louis Stevenson verses as well as childhood versions of fairy tales.  This first volume had "the Nursery" in its title, appropriately enough.  The stories and other things in the last volume were longer, more serious and more complicated, with few illustrations (unless I am mis-remembering).  Knowing my childhood self, I expect at some point I set out to read every word in all the volumes, poem or story, one after the other until I had finished the whole collection.  But I don't think I stuck with the plan.

I'm sure I would not have waited very long before I tried to read the pieces in the final volume, something like wanting to be "all grown up."

I can almost remember Mother reading the nursery rhymes to me (to us, perhaps), helping us memorize them: "To market, to market...," "Baa, Baa, black sheep, have you any wool?," "Little boy blue...," "Diddle, Diddle, Dumpling,/my son John...," "Georgie Porgie...," etc.  Maybe it was in this volume that I first saw, "Peas porridge hot!" and wondered how in the world something to eat called porridge could possibly get to be "nine days old."  But I mainly associate that particular rhyme with another thin but wide book we had somewhere in the house with stylized drawings (silhouettes, perhaps) of black people - mainly big-breasted women - and almost naked little children, going about ordinary tasks like sweeping up or cooking or washing clothes.  These, I believe, were supposed to be African folks.  Many of these children's rhymes were little songs, but I don't think we sang "Peas porridge."

In terms of the stories, in this first Bookhouse collection I remember "Cinderella," "Billy Goats Gruff" (the troll captured my imagination), "Rapunzel," "Little Red Riding Hood." Was "Rumpelstiltskin" in this volume?  That one particularly fascinated me, though I didn't know why...

We were listening to "Let's Pretend" on the radio in this period, where many of these classic stories were acted out.  It was great.  One didn't tire of hearing, or reading, such stories over and over again...

This is probably a good place to mention as well that we had at home what I presume were all the A. A. Milne books, the ones with the original (Shepard?) illustrations: Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, as well as the books of verses: When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six.  These were on a small book case behind my bedroom door when it was open. 

I knew all these books by heart, and loved Pooh and Piglet, Owl and Eeyore, Kanga and Roo (and the others).  I could recite several of my favorite poems, including "Halfway Down the Stairs" (...is where I'm at), "Lines and Squares," "Butter for My Bread," and "Bad Sir Brian" (ting-ling, rat-tat).  It was a great surprise to me to discover years later, when exploring the living-room bookshelves with Dad's old books, that Milne was primarily a playwright and novelist for adults.  I thought a sweet little novel with Two People in the title was very good, and when I told Dad how surprised I was to find it, he said something like "Oh, yes.  The Pooh books were just a little sideline."

From the later volumes of My Bookhouse, I remember especially liking "Casey at the Bat" and the verse about the railroad hero "Davy Jones."  I think I also was introduced by this collection to authors like Dickens, Hawthorne, Browning, and Poe.  But I can't recall any more details than that.  I wish I could.

We also had a color-illustrated Aesop's Fables that I knew well, and at some point I read (but never owned) the popular children's novel set in the Revolutionary War, Johnny Tremain.  That was not unlike the Meader historical novels for children, and I thought it was terrific.

2

When I was a youngster, some feared that reading comic books - oops, graphic novels - would reduce a child's motivation, ability, and inclination to read, really read, printed material with no pictures.  My own parents did not seem concerned about that but, as usual, they were concerned that none of us spent more than necessary.  Eventually my sister and I got a weekly allowance - 50 cents - just for spending money, and sometimes I spent some of my allowance on comic books.

It's a little hard to sort out which comics I became familiar with from the common custom of sharing comics with friends... at least when they visited their friends at home.  But one way or the other I was quite familiar with the best-known favorites, like Archie (and Veronica, Jughead, Reggie, and others... Betty?), Li'l Lulu, Donald Duck, Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Superman, Hopalong Cassidy, Spiderman, Tarzan, Bat Man and Robin, and so on.

Among all the many comics cowboys, I tended to buy for myself - not Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, or even The Cisco Kid - but Tim Holt, Lash Larue, and Johnny Mack Brown.  One of my favorite cowboy stars used to say to his horse, "Come on, Paydirt!  Scratch gravel!"  That was about as memorable to me as the radio Sergeant Preston's "On, King! On, you huskies!" or the masked man's "Hi-Ho, Silver! Away!" and Tonto's "Get 'em up, Scout!"  Alas, I don't remember who it was that had the fast horse named Paydirt.

One of my favorite superheroes was Plastic Man.  I remember his catching a gang of bad guys by rushing ahead of them and turning himself into an elevator!  I thought that was brilliant crime-fighting.

When Billy Batson said "Shazam!" he turned into Captain Marvel, another of my favorites (you know, not Superman).  I sent in a quarter or some coin and became a member of the Captain Marvel Club.  I had my special code ring and everything.

And what about the amazing speed of another favorite, Flash?  He was sometimes featured in his own comic but was also a member of a team of some kind, a team of superheroes.  I think Wonder Woman may have been one of the good guys on the team.

For some reason, I also bought war comics from time to time.  The Korean War was going on; I remember hearing Paul Harvey on the radio telling thrilling and uplifting stories about it (maybe it was in "Page Two!")  From the comics, I remember learning about "Screaming Mimi's" (I suppose they were incoming mortar rounds) that seemed to terrify the men.  There was a comic I liked to get now and then about a team of "special forces" called The Blackhawks.

It seems now like many of these "boy comics" with a good bit of violence, patriotism, courage, and honor featured full-page ads for either of two body-building programs.  The most common ads were for the Charles Atlas program.  Those were the ones about the 90-pound weakling getting sand kicked in his face. ...But since that was the more common one, I was naturally more interested in the other program: George F. Jowett's program.  Again for a quarter or a dime I bought a brochure with a few exercises illustrated in it.  They were simple and required no equipment.  Where is that brochure now when I could use it?

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But the comics I remember the most fondly of all were Classics Illustrated.  As a parent myself, I think I would have had serious reservations about my children perhaps limiting themselves to such simplified versions of the real gems of literature, but I don't remember my own parents saying Boo about that or anything else.  It was remarked that these Classics cost more than the comic comics, and it is true that I had to manage my little allowance carefully to be able to afford them.

Here are some Classics Illustrated that I remember reading.   By the way, I suspect my friends did not collect the Classics, so I probably owned all of these at one time or another:

Bring 'Em Back Alive

Joan of Arc

The Time Machine

Lorna Doone

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The Red Badge of Courage

Robin Hood

Master of the World

War of the Worlds

Moby Dick

The Man Without a Country

Poe stories, including The Pit and the Pendulum and The Fall of the House of Usher

The Last of the Mohicans

The Prince and the Pauper

Cyrano de Bergerac

The Master of Ballantrae

Green Mansions

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Pudd'nhead Wilson

I remember the graphic look of each of these.  There were other classics (classic books, not the comics) that I read from the library - like Tom Sawyer, White Fang, and Captains Courageous - and there were others, of course, that I saw as movies which may well have existed in Comics Illustrated versions: such as Song of the South, Kim, Ivanhoe, and Around the World in 80 Days.  Also, some of the Classics Illustrated that I remember clearly as such were also movies, like Lorna Doone and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

 4

I mentioned in Part One the many books owned by my parents on shelves in our living-room.  Besides those I mentioned specifically were dozens of others.  I read a number of them too.  But as I moved into the teen years, Christmas and birthday presents tended from time to time to include books.

One I remember fondly and wish I could see again, to indulge my nostalgia, was a small book about baseball heroes.  There were photos, some key statistics, and short biographies with reasonably detailed career histories.  That was easier then because players did not move from team to team very often.  Perhaps there was information about the early greats like Honus Wagner, Nappy Lajoie, Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, and others, but what I remember most vividly is the older but then current and the more recent players.

Maybe I already had my favorites from listening to the Game of the Day on radio and from reading the box scores in the morning paper.  Or maybe this little book helped determine who my favorites were.  But, however they were set in my imagination, I certainly did have my favorites, and what I remember most clearly about each of them is the pictures and information in my little book.

Among these favorites were the Yankees Yogi Berra, and especially Phil Rizzuto.  More of them, like Rizzuto, were infielders than pitchers or outfielders: Johnny Evers, Nellie Fox, Eddie Stanke, Pee Wee Reese, Al Rosen, George Kell.  Others were Mel Ott, Bob Feller, Hank Greenburg, Stan Musial, Lefty Gomez, and Bill Dickey.

It may be obvious that missing from this list of my childhood favorite baseball heros were some legendary players, like Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, Gil Hodges, Jackie Robinson,  Joe DiMaggio, Mike or Mickey Cochrane, Lou Gehrig, and Ernie Banks.  I don't know why I don't remember my little book's treatment of these heroes as well as the others.

There were other books I owned, of course.  As I entered junior high, among the socks and pajamas, "boys' books" began to appear in my Christmas and birthday presents.  I had two books by Ralph Moody about growing up on a ranch out west; I remember thinking the first one, Little Britches, was pretty good, but the other one wasn't.  It had been a present, though, so I didn't tell anyone.  I had gotten a puppy for my tenth birthday (Sox, half collie and half chow), and had a few dog books.   I remember thinking that the one I had by Albert Payson Terhune was stodgy, at least compared to the Jack London books I'd read from the library and my two favorites about Kazan the Wolf Dog by James Oliver Curwood.  (I didn't notice the "cur" part of his name!)

I had several Hardy Boy mysteries, and I remember kind of enjoying several boys' books I had found at my grandparents' house about 200 miles north: coming from two series, one about "Scouts" (including one about fighting in World War I) and the other about "the Rover Boys."  These had belonged to my uncle as a boy, which means they must have been written no later than 1920.  I had been given books in several other series too: Chip Hilton sports adventures (I remember the phrase "a high hard one" figuring in one of those), and mysteries about Ken Holt or John Blaine.  I liked the Hardy Boys best, though, even if they were the best known and most popular.

5

Until I indulged myself in this nostalgic review of childhood reading, I didn't fully realize how many of my favorite books and comics were those considered designed for boys' boys.  It's true that every so often now - 50 years later - I enjoy reading Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Robert Parker, Len Deighton, and John LeCarre...

What can I learn from this... (if anything)?

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