Sneaky Reading

Daddy not only disliked reading, he was offended by it. “Don’t you have anything better to do? Put that book down and clean out your closet! Wash the woodwork! Get out there and rake the yard!” It didn’t do to let Daddy catch you reading if he was in a bad mood. It didn’t take much to stimulate a bad mood, in the unlikely event he didn’t already have one going. You could always count on getting caught with a book to do it.

Mother was a voracious reader and a casual housekeeper, a problem for Daddy. He needed an illiterate automaton. It set Daddy on fire to stomp through and find Mother reading, especially with dishes stacked in the sink or the floor needed sweeping, which frequently happened. Not to mention, she had five children, ensuring in inordinate amount of work, even for an organized person. No one ever accused Mother of being organized.

Not only that, Daddy frequently pulled Mother away to help him or sent her to town for something he needed. Both Daddy and Mother had more work than they could do. In addition to his paper mill job, Daddy was building a farm and cattle herd. Mother had to put biscuits in the oven before she went out to milk the cow and feed chickens. Neither ever had a minute to spare. Like all farm kids, we were pressed into service as early as possible. Everybody worked all the time, building fences, gardening, making hay, on and on, and on.

Mother read whenever she could steal a minute, while rocking a baby, while drinking coffee, while Daddy and the kids watched TV at night. Daddy hated that. He said “If I had time to read, I’d read the Bible.” I wondered at the time why he didn’t do that instead of watch TV, but didn’t bother to ask.

He’d only read two books in his life, Old Yeller and The Lilies of the Field, probably for school.

Naturally, several of his children did plenty of sneaky reading.