Caution: This post is for real old timers only. In an age when
printed books as we know them are disappearing in favor of digital editions, I
was remembering my parochial school days in the '40s and '50s when none of this
electronic stuff had even been imagined. Books were valued and treated with
loving care. Most households struggled to put food on the table, so for many, books
were a luxury. We had a few well-thumbed volumes in our house, but most of the
books I read came from the public library. My parents were too busy raising us
and making ends meet to have much free time for reading. The first books I came
in contact with were the "Dick and Jane" readers we were given in
first grade. Although the idyllic lives led by Dick and Jane, their parents,
their dog Spot and cat Tabby were so far removed from my own, I enjoyed reading
the stories.
We received a new reader in every grade. The stories got more
sophisticated as we were introduced to harder vocabulary words and more complex
sentence structure. We stood up and read aloud in the classroom, with our
teachers calling on each child to take a turn. If you mispronounced a word, the
teacher would correct you, and so we learned. (Today's parents would probably
be consulting attorneys to sue the school for publicly correcting their child
in class.) The readers were given to you at the beginning of each term,
and you were responsible for caring for them. I remember making book covers out
of brown paper bags to help protect the book covers. You had to turn the books in
at the end of the term, and God help you if there was any scribbled marks on
the pages.
We also wrote with fountain pens, the kind you had to fill with
ink. The pens had a rubber bladder that held about a day's worth of brilliant
thoughts. We used blotters to blot the ink while it was still wet to keep it
from smearing. All the local politicians handed out blotters with their
campaign pictures on the reverse side of the blotting paper. We were required
to use only blue-black ink in our pens. You were expected to fill your pen at
home, but the teachers kept a supply of ink you could use if you ran out.
Scripto made blue-black ink, but then a company called Waterman's began making
inks in exotic colors like aqua and green, colors which were frowned upon in
our school. Because the pens tended to leak, every boy at one time or other
wore his blue-black badge of courage with honor.
I have a tablet, laptop, smart phone and a Dick Tracy two-way
wrist radio, but like some old timers, I still like the feel and smell of real books.
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