Stories

Reading

After school, I spent my afternoons in the Woodlawn Branch Library, waiting for my mom to pick me up on her way home from work. It was directly across the street from my high school.

The library hosted a Summer Reading Program each summer, giving a prize to the kid reading the most books during summer vacation. I never won. My next-door neighbor usually did this by reading short books for kids while I read books of substance.

I read slowly and remember everything I read.

The first book I remember was The Mystery of the Wooden Indian by Elizabeth Honness. It was a young person's mystery novel, a great story with relatable child characters. The kids in the Honness Mysteries became my best friends, and I became a member of their mystery-solving team. I may have been in love with Barbara. Maybe it was it was Nancy.

As I approached my teen years, I began reading Science Fiction. My first book was Apollo at Go by Jeff Sutton, about the first landing on the moon using the planned technology for the actual missions. Then I began reading Ray Bradbury, Frank Herbert, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Robert Heinlein, everything by them I could get.

My favorite story, by far, is The Sands of Time by P. Schuyler Miller. It is the perfect Time Travel story. I still go back and read it again and again. I found out that Miller wrote a sequel, which I found in an old magazine. I paid $30 for it. The story was terrible. He went too far trying to explain the mysteries of the first story and to bring its perfect open ending to a close. I threw the magazine and the story away.

Mom and Dad let me join the Science Fiction Book Club. I had a very extensive library for a young boy. My favorites were the anthologies of short stories published as The World's Best Science Fiction each year. When I began moving around the world with the Army, I gave my books away. It was like saying goodbye to old friends.

In my twenties, I began my love for history. I mostly read about Ancient times and the Civil War. History remains my primary focus. Science, too, has become a great love.