My High School Classmates

We didn't used to look like this.  I can name about 4 of these people just by looking at them.  Well, probably they wouldn't recognize me right off either.

Thanks for visiting with me.

Kathi

Early Rising

Once upon a time, very few people slept late.  Everyone had to work in a factory at the crack of dawn or milk the cows and feed the chickens.  That's what roosters were for.

My father grew up on a farm.  He never got over it.  He would be up and dressed somewhere around 5:30 every morning.  Now and again he would call up the stairs, "You're missing the best part of the day!"

I hated that, especially in my teen years.

However, when I was in the lower grades, especially in the summer, I remember waking before anyone else, putting on some clothes and running outside with barefeet.  I would watch the sun rise over the neighbor's pasture with dewy wet feet.  What glory!

Maybe my father was right.  I've missed the best part of the day for years now.  It's just that I married a night-owl and I can't burn the day at both ends. 

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi

Reading

The first conscious memory I have is that of being tucked under my mother's left arm while she read me a book.  I leaned against her pregnant stomach.

My brother, incidentally, claims that's why he has a dent in his head.

We lived well outside of town, so I had my parents, a little brother, and eventually two younger sisters for playmates.  I was two miles down the road from anyone even close to my age. 

We invented our own fun.  Large cardboard boxes and clothes pins turned into castles.  With a folding table in the middle of the play room, blankets stretched from piano to couch making a room-sized tent.  We had a platform in one of the trees and a swing set.  We played baseball, badminton, and tag.  We had room to run, turn cartwheels, and hide from each other.

But my favorite thing was to read.  I read so much that my mother on several occasions took the kitchen timer and turned it to one hour.  She then told me, "You WILL go out and play until this dings." 

I borrowed books from the school library and the town library.  I was allowed four books at a time from the town library which was a small Carnegie building.  During the summer after fifth grade, I crossed the aisle from the children's side of the library to the adult side.  The first big book I borrowed was The Big Fisherman by Lloyd C. Douglas.  The librarian tried hard to talk me into sticking with the children's books.  I never really gave up the children's books (still read them today), but I loved the freedom to read whatever was available. 

A year later, my mother suggested a few books for me to tackle.  I read Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.  Believe me, I used ever single footnote and word definition to get through it, but I understood most of it when I was finished.

Mother also suggested (almost required) that I read a few books that described the Holocaust.  I went through The Diary of Anne Frank, Baba Yar, and The Painted Bird.  On my own I read, The Day Lincoln Was Shot by Jim Bishop, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, and The Christmas Carol. 

It was pretty sneaky of my mother to let me read the classics before I found out that I wasn't supposed to like them.  In high school, while everyone else was moaning and groaning about the required reading list, I was checking off the ones I'd already finished.

I've gone through seasons of reading science fiction (favorites: Robert Heinlein and Anne McCaffrey), historical fiction both Biblical and other (the older, the better), mystery (many favorite authors - but more toward the cozy mystery side), and a couple of romance authors - Grace Livingston Hill comes to mind.

If you want to know what I'm reading now, check out Margaret Peterson Haddix (The Missing series) and Jan Bozarth (the Fairy Godmother Academy series). 

If I still had the time I had back then - well, I don't think I would change my habits.  I'd still read until someone set the kitchen timer on me and told me to go out and play.

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi