My father, Robert, was Albert's youngest brother.
School
Supplies and Books
When young Robert
started each school year, his mother gave him a tablet of coarse paper and a
stubby pencil. She told him not to waste. These supplies had to last him all
year. She had an income, which would have allowed her to purchase more paper
and pencils for Robert and his siblings, but she didn’t spend her money that
way. His handwriting, as well as his sense of punctuation and capitalization,
were substandard.
And yet…
The man Robert, my
father, could read a three-hundred-page book…anything I checked out from the
library and brought home for him…in a night. The librarian wouldn’t let me
check out a book until I’d finished the one I already had. She usually expected
each student to read a book in a week. I felt bad because I wanted to bring
more books home to Daddy. If I rushed and read the book faster, she’d say I was
probably neglecting my other work. It was a hassle to check out another book
before the passage of seven days.
I asked him, “How
can you read that fast?”
With a twinkle in
his eye, he said, “I don’t know. I just do.”
He never walked
through the doors of a public library. In the summer my mother let me go to the
library. I usually checked out three books a week. He finished all of them
before I could read half of one.
By setting this
example, he taught me to read fast and enjoy books.
He graduated from
high school, which consisted of grades one through eleven with no kindergarten
or senior year. Then he attended a summer session of normal school, which
qualified him to be a teacher.
He never taught.
All his life he farmed. The only work he loved was farm work.
