By Marti Fiske
I wanted to be a
reader from a very, very young age. (See photo above.) But once I started
school I had problems learning how. The teachers knew that I didn’t have any
learning disorder. I would do well in small group work, but not so well in
larger groups. It wasn’t until the
school nurse visited our classroom mid-way through first grade for general eye
exams that they figured out the problem. I couldn’t see the chalkboards and
flash cards in the distance. After my seat was moved to the front of the room
and I got glasses my reading skills took off.
I grew up in the
small farming community of Fairfield, Vermont (population 1,493 in 1980). I don’t remember having a library in my
school until I was in junior high, and that was tiny. There was no public
library in town then. The nearest library was 20 minutes away in St. Albans. My
family didn’t use that library because for many years we only had one car and
my dad took it to work. My family had to make every dollar stretch. Buying a
new book was always a special occasion. Somehow though, there was always
reading material around.
My father read
the newspaper daily and had trade magazines related to his work. He had a long
row of books, mostly history and a few classics, in shelves tucked under the
short knee-wall in his den. My mom had a small collection of paperback novels,
mostly science fiction, over her side of the bed in a built-in headboard shelf.
The school offered quarterly newsletters from which I could order a few
inexpensive paperbacks. Every few months we might make a trip to the bookstore
in St. Albans. I saved up money from birthdays, my paper route and babysitting.
Eventually I would have a small collection of Trixie Belden mystery books. I
loved those books so much that I decided to save them for the next generation
in my family. My whole collection fit into a brown shopping bag. I eventually
passed the collection along to my nieces, but by then Harry Potter and fantasy
was all the rage. I’m not sure that they were ever read.
