by Robert Amedee L’Ecuyer

Books and Radio in My Life

My mom started me on reading when I was three. The first book I was conscious of was a simple primary book intended for a kindergartener. But, the same year she gave me a big-sized book. It was about 300 pages with one story on each page.  

We worked on reading, and I got going by picking out words. I couldn’t read every word but she let me hold the book and take it with me. I spent a lot of time looking at that oversized volume, trying to figure out what was happening in each story. 

When I started reading on my own, I tried to read everything in my Dad’s bookcase.  Then we started going to the library in Concordia. I went to the children’s section and Mom let me check out the max number of books, which was 12. 

I would take them home and read them each week. I could read 80 pages in an hour and finish a kid’s novel in a day. I usually sat on the floor or in a chair. I loved reading and that never changed. 

I read everything I could get my hands on. I learned that I was bright and curious. It gave me freedom to explore things that other kids didn’t.  It was a whole world and something I could control. 

We were told to do lots of things as kids, Sally and me and later Mary. We did the dishes after every meal and had regular cleaning duties. Depending on the season, I mowed the lawn or shoveled sidewalks. Those were responsibilities, but not my choice. 

Reading was something I chose to do, and the other was listening to the table model radio in my room. Everybody had big radios in the living room, and I had one in my own room.  

I started noticing that there were novels for kids, like Hardy Boys. So I read those and occasionally I would get a Nancy Drew as well. I wasn’t restricted just to ‘boys’ novels. 

When Sally started to read, I would read stories to her and I read a lot to Mary too. We visited Aunt Louella and Uncle Max two or three weekends a month, and I would read to Mary and George (the twin cousins). So I was not only reading for myself but to my sisters, too. 

Reading was a major part of my life.  I knew how to get to the public library in every place I lived. My mother would take me on Saturdays and we’d spend the morning in the library. Later I could go by myself, and also go upstairs to look at any book in the entire library. 

The library in Ridgewood New Jersey was down by the railroad tracks. I would hitchhike to get downtown. I went through that library section-by-section over the years. I could go during the week after school, too.  

At the same time, I started going to movies with Aunt Temp, Aunt Jackie, and my mom. We went on Saturdays and sometimes on weekday afternoons. I saw most of the major movies with stars like Joan Fontaine, Ida Lupino, and Joan Crawford. 

My mom read the movie magazines, and when she was done I would read them. We took subscriptions of Life, Time, Fortune, and Look Magazine. The movie magazines were fun because I was seeing the movies and learning about the stars behind them. 

When I got to school, I saw the books that teachers read from and I wanted to get hold of one myself. Because I skipped ahead two years in school, I ended up in sixth grade at only ten years old. My mom thought I needed to be with kids my own age, so she had me put back to fifth grade which I had already completed. 

The teacher understood my situation and she made me an assistant to the librarian. When it wasn’t time for math or science, I would be in the library. I was allowed to read any of the books, and I did, including full sets of encyclopedias. 

They had at least four sets intended for young people – Britannica, Americana, World Book, and those other ones. I read them all! They included all sorts of science and history. 

It gave me a look into what was going on in the world and a chance to be educated about topics that were beyond most kids my age. For my tenth birthday my dad bought me a set of Britannica Junior encyclopedias. Twelve volumes and I eventually made it through the entire set several times.  

At home, I was supposed to be in bed at 8 o’clock. When my mom closed the door, I would flip the light back on and read until midnight. For a while I got captivated with novels about men on sailing ships, and I read books about sports, too. I read quite a number of biographies about baseball players. 

I still had time to play outside with my friends. We played baseball and football, and we had a basket and backboard above the garage door. But, I also learned about sports through books.  I knew about a lot of stuff before I got to the age when those activities were for me. 

I learned about girls and romance early through books. That got me thinking! In those days the references were careful and I was too dense to understand the details. I would read my mom’s novels and those gave me some insights about women. There was a book about a teenage romance that I read four or five times in a year.

I was scared to death of girls. I had girls that were friends but I didn’t know that one could do more than kiss.  I still thought storks brought babies. Some of my friends that were boys started talking about men and women, and I didn’t think that was real. 

One of my teachers caught on. She couldn’t tell me the answer directly but read a newspaper column to the class. That opened my eyes to pregnancy and motherhood. My world was restricted in the sense that people didn’t talk or read openly about those subjects.

Otherwise, I had no limit on what I read. In a novel you’re just getting the feeling of the story. Nonfiction, you’re trying to remember and understand the facts. The encyclopedias, I tried to comprehend the complexities of the facts. 

I read Tolstoy’s War and Peace when I was ten. Did I understand it? No. I read it again five or six years later and it was a different book, and then again many years later. The finest novel ever written, in my opinion.  

Imagination is something you can control. You can choose what you want to think about. Reading stimulates my imagination because I visualize the characters as I read. Same with the radio as well. 

Radio performers don’t look like what you imagine. One of the detectives had a great voice on the radio. Later I saw a picture. He was short, fat, and bald. Not what I had imagined.  

A lot of classic novels I’m glad I read, like Les Miserables. I was also glad that I read the top ten fiction lists, too. Either my dad or mom would read those books and pass them on. 

As a teenager, my dad and I were companions. He would start a conversation at dinner and it might go two or three hours. He read a lot of professional stuff and would talk to me about those topics. I took one of his courses and that was a time I read much of what he was reading. 

My folks had subscriptions to the morning and evening newspapers every day too. My dad got the New York Times when taking the train into work and brought it home every evening.  

I have trouble reading now because of my eyesight, but for a time I was comfortable reading large print. Julie hunted them down and I happily got what she found. First, a romance novel. Another one was an adventure novel with a female protagonist, and another was a translation of a Russian novel. Reading was slow then. It might take me a month to read a novel rather than a day or two.  

I would love to read more now, but it is too tedious. My mind works faster than my eyes and it makes me think ahead to all kinds of outside ideas not connected to whatever I’m reading, including how I would write the book myself. ‘In order to’ is a phrase I notice as an editor. You really only need the word ‘to.’ I spot the phrase and it causes my mind to go in a different direction. 

That’s a problem-solving frame of mind that I learned in law school. I’m in the minority of people who might care about that now. But it’s something I notice now and it’s distracting.  

The temptation is to watch more public television. The stories on Channel 8 remind me a lot of the programs on the radio. They were on during the day and at night growing up. I keep the news on in the background, now.

The other limitation is that I get drowsy at my age. When I was younger I could stay awake until  2am and still get up for work or school on time. I didn’t sleep as many hours, and now I do!