How Reading Exercised My Mind

Once Upon a Bookworm

Ever since I can remember, my sisters and I have been called bookworms. Folks who called us that were sometimes frustrated and sometimes delighted. We didn’t mind. What better things to do with one’s mind than to travel, fantasize, solve mysteries, and dream of love, all in the comforts of home?

We visited the local library regularly (and paid enough overdue fines to pay the librarian’s salary). Our mother provided books on a monthly basis as payment for working in her bakery. We acquired an entire set of The Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew mysteries during those years.

During two different occasions, our half-sister Katharine was bedridden with rheumatic fever. She read to us almost nightly from the Peace Greenfield books by Ruth Alberta Brown. We were crowded into a small sewing room around her hospital bed, but we didn’t mind; the suspense and emotions were worth the cramped space.

Trixie Beldon, Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, the Tuckers, the Happy Hollisters, and the Bobbsey Twins kept us occupied until we moved on to Laura Ingalls, Anne of Green Gables, and books written by Gene Stratton Porter. Long before Laura Ingalls or Anne of Green Gables became known through film or video, we had followed their stories from book to book. Sadly to me, my kids hardly know who most of these story people are!

Summer nights found us with windows open and crickets, Katy-Dids, or frogs serenading us outside the windows as we read “one more page” or “one more chapter” until way past our bedtime. Winter nights, when we knew there’d be no school the next day, we’d kept our bed lamps on until the wee hours of the morning.

On another night during a visit with our sister Loretta and her family in Nebraska, I heard Alice sniffling in the bed beside me.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked, half-closing my book.

To find out why my sister was crying, mosey on up to The Attic of My Windowsill.  You can open the door by clicking here.