I think I was in second grade when Mom took me to
downtown Geneva and introduced me to the library. One of the church women that
Mom knew was a librarian there and she was starting a ‘story hour’ for the
summer. Every Thursday, from 10 to 11AM, she would read a book and tell a
story. From the first, I was hooked!
By the summer after 3rd grade, I knew the
way to the library and could go alone. Better yet, after story hour, I could
walk through the children’s section and I had my own library card. I could take
four books each week, return them the next week and get 4 more! This became my
summer occupation. By the summer after 5th or 6th grade,
the library held a contest. Read 8 books, half fiction and half about a country
and write a story about your findings. I wrote, as well I remember, about
living in Holland. I won the contest and was awarded a book to keep!
(“Diantha's Signet Ring").
Yes, I was a reader, and descendant of a long line
of readers! There are stories galore about those who came before me. Great
Grandma Nancy Borthwick Baker, I never knew. But I have a letter written to my
mother before she was married (1915) telling how Great Grandma was then living
with her daughter (my great aunt Florence) in Scranton, recuperating from an
illness. Aunt Florence was complaining to Mom about her inability to keep her
mother in ‘reading material’. She went weekly to the ‘Carnegie’ to try to keep
up ( a Carnegie was a building where books could be taken out—a library—given
to many communities by Andrew Carnegie to promote reading. In fact, the
original library in Lisle, NY near where Mom and Florence both grew up, was a
‘Carnegie’).
And there is my favorite cousin Gladys’ comment
referring to her mother, ‘Ma might have married again after my father died, but
there was no room on her bed!’(referring to the fact that the bed was always
covered in books). ‘Ma’ of course was our beloved ‘Lilypickle’, Aunt Lil, Mom’s
sister.
No better was their brother Adin! Mom always bought
him a book for Christmas and his birthday. He leaned towards Zane Gray novels.
Adin loved all Westerns, ‘Kill ‘em Bad Boys’ or whatever, and truly, his bed
was his bookcase.
Growing up with Mom, I seldom saw her read more than
the daily paper or a magazine. I thought it was the fact that those depression
years there was little money to spare, and few people bought books. We surely
had very few—but as I began to raise my own children, I understood why my
memory was so scant. There was little time to read with the work involved with
raising children.
Ethel Baker Taylor
Magazines I could read sketchily, but I longed for
books, but there was no time. Thus I was driven to invent the ‘reading lunch’
by my own selfish desire to find time to READ! Two or three times a week,
especially in summer, when lunchtime was more flexible, we would read while
eating lunch, and Yes, I still do it (Pat remembers these as ‘reading dinners’
and she too kept alive that tradition with her own children!).
Lucille Taylor Kinsella
Each of my siblings became ‘readaholics’. Esther
even wrote a book report as she finished each book.
I never knew Great Grandma Diadamia Mott Youngs, but
she had the AMD gene (age related macular degeneration) and was very blind and
deaf. Her daughter, Kate Youngs Baker was my grandma and she was a reader!
Growing up, visiting her, there was always a copy of the latest farming
magazine in the kitchen by the rocking chair near the stove. ’Farm Woman’ for
her, and for Adin who ran the farm in my day, a man’s farm journal. When I
visited Grandma, I used to read to her, for she had her mother’s gene and it
grew hard for her to see.
Kate Youngs Baker and Friends!
Mom told stories of reading to her father, Byron
Baker (whom I never knew) as he began to have eye trouble as he grew older.
Perhaps glaucoma, as I know he spent some weeks in Cortland having eye drops
inserted. In his early years when he farmed the land, he was often ‘out and
about’ among his neighbors, selling books such as ‘San Francisco Fire’ or
‘Sinking of the Titanic’’; a job that I think he enjoyed more than farming.
Grateful I am to him though, as those were two books we had growing up, and
poured over by every kid.
Byron Baker
In Geneva, every Sunday night, until we grew old
enough to go to ‘Young People Group’ at church, Daddy read Doris, Harold and
myself a chapter from ‘Harlbert’s Bible Stories’.
Daddy’s choice in reading was more cosmopolitan. He
liked western Indian stories. He
used to sit on a tree stump by the stove and read in the evenings. I made many
a cushion for that stump! His mother I also did not know but his father I did.
He was deep into ‘National Geographic’ magazines.
With my own siblings, every visit or reunion brought
an exchange of books, especially after the war years when paperback printing
exploded!
Yes, I am part of a family of readers. A wonderful
bequest! By the time I hit high school, the librarian told me I’d read every
fiction book they had in the Geneva library. As you can see, Reading runs deeply in my DNA!
