The First Book I Ever Bought

It was the summer before I turned seven. A favorite activity for all of us kids in the neighborhood was to ride our bikes up to the TG&Y dime store in the local shopping center and usually just drool over all the toys in the children’s section. The distance between our block and the dime store was about a mile-and-a-half; we’d ride back streets to get there, avoiding the more direct, and busy, nearby U.S. Highway 61. 

The shopping center included the TG&Y, a Beall’s department store, a Western Auto, a Mackenzie’s Bakery, and the anchor, the A&P grocery store. A few years later, a Katz & Bestoff (K&B) drug store was added on the western end. 

As young as I was, I was reading beyond my years. I liked the dime store’s toys and games as much as anyone, but I also would wander over to where the children’s books were displayed in something like a magazine rack, with staggered rows so you could see all the titles. The books were for all ages, from toddler to young teen. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph by Eleanor Brooke via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The Pulls and Fears of Andersonville – Sarah Kay Bierle at Emerging Civil War. 

 

Will this Civil War soldier Bible find its way back to his family? – John Banks’ Civil War Blog.

 

Book Review: Building a House Divided: Slavery, Westward Expansion, and the Roots of the Civil War – Patrick Kelly-Fischer at Emerging Civil War.

Books from Childhood

My wife found me in the basement this morning. Instead of getting ready for church, I was looking through a shelf of old childhood books, trying to remember who wrote the Trixie Belden books. Yes, I could have gone to Amazon.com or Wikipedia, but with the computer off, it was quicker to go the memories-in-the-basement route. At least that's what I told myself (my wife knew better).

Trixie Belden and the Secret of the Mansion is the very first book I can remember buying. I think I was 6 or 7 years old; the book was a little beyond my age group but I was one of those early readers. I bought it it for 59 cents at the local TG&Y dimestore, rode home on my bike and dove into the book.

The book had everything a kid could want. An old deserted mansion, a tomboy heroine with a rich best friend, a lost teenaged boy living on his own, a little brother who gets bitten by a copperhead, a mystery -- it didn't get much better than that. I read all of the Trixie Belden books published at the time, perhaps seven or eight books in all. (The series got reinvented a few years ago, and there are a lot more volumes than there were in the 1950s and early 1960s.)

From Trixie Belden, I graduated to the Hardy Boys. I liked Trixie Belden, but I loved the Hardy Boys stories. I read them all, starting with The Tower Treasure. These weren't the modern updates but reprints of the originals from the 1920s and 1930s, and included such incomprehensible words as "roadster." I had the complete set, and made the mistake of leaving them at my mother's house until it was too late -- she told me how fast they sold at a garage sale. But I picked up a few along the way at used book stores, and they're down in the basement, too, right near Trixie.

So are some books from the old Scholastic Book Service. A book club through school! And every month! Forget homework. I'd bring home the paper flyer with all the books being offered and pore over it. My choices were eclectic -- mysteries like The Mystery in Old Quebec; funny stories like Triple Trouble for Rupert; and occasionally even books that were obviously for girls, like Understood Betsy (a city girl is sent to live with relatives on a New England farm; I learned where maple syrup comes from).

One of these Scholastic books was called Ready-Made Family. It's the story of three children -- Hetty, Peter and Rosemary -- who are orphaned and adopted by a childless couple. Hetty needs braces and has all of the insecurities of a young girl; Peter's a born troublemaker (a lot of the tension of the book is about Hetty's fears that Peter will be sent back to the orphanage); and Rosemary, the sweet and pretty youngest of the three, is the one everyone falls in love with. I still remember feeling terrified when Peter breaks a window of the house next door, owned by a crotchety old man; I knew this kid was going to be back at the orphanage in no time. This is one book I didn't find in my basement (probably another garage sale), but wish I had. It rates as one of my childhood favorites. Obviously, since I remember the main characters and the plot.

Books can be powerful things.

Oh, that author's name. According to the title pages, the author of the first few Trixie Belden books was Julie Campbell, and then Kathryn Kenny.