The Power of Print

There were no books in our house. The reason were compelling: books were an extravagance, my parents, as renters who had moved at least 6 times in the first 7 years of their marriage, had no place for book storage or relocation, and, busy with the struggle for survival, they had no time for leisure reading. And, until we moved to VF, none of the houses we lived in had electricity, so reading time was pretty much limited to the daylight hours. Oh, there was an ancient Bible handed down from some forbearer, and my father had a picture album from WWI, and an old dictionary. Even so, I think all 3 of us kids could read before we started school, probably thanks to my mother's teaching us the A, B, C's when she could find the time. So, we had no books, but as I recall, we always had the newspaper, The Troy Record, delivered every day. In the early years, it came by US Mail. In the absence of even radio reports, newspapers were the method of finding out what was happening in the world. My father would read the paper after supper. I would watch him when he read the news, and quite often, listen to him, because at times he would become infuriated with what he was reading, and relay his feeling to my mother in a very emotional manner. His reactions were so heated, and his opinions so strong, that I wondered what the paper could have said to make my otherwise calm and quiet father so angry. I was so curious that I couldn't wait to be able to read the "big words" to find out if I would get heated up too. As soon as I could read most words, I would sneak away with the paper (I thought my reading it might have been frowned on), and read as much as I could. While I could read the words, it was still a mystery to me how those words could have elicited any reaction at all. I chalked it up to those few "big words" that I didn't know. I was far too young to understand politics.