One thing I vividly remember about grade school was ordering paperback books. Several times each year, our teacher would receive a catalog of available books from TAB, the Teen Age Book Club. We would eagerly look through the listing of available books to see if there was something we wanted to order. Each book would have a picture of the cover, a short description of the book, the price, and an order number.
I would look through the list and get to order a couple books each time. I loved the books about animals and adventure stories. I still have many of those books today. I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away or give them away when we moved. So I packed them up and carted them with us.
There was Red Fox by Charles Roberts, The Red Pony by John Steinbeck, Old Yeller by Fred Gipson, Midnight–The Story of a Wild Horse, and Ghost Town Adventure, both by Rutherford Montgomery, The Mudhen, and The Mudhen and the Walrus, both by Merritt Parmelee Allen, Big Red, Outlaw Red, and Irish Red, all by Jim Kjelgaard, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Jim Davis–Smuggler’s Captive by John Masefield, Down the Big River– Two Boys Battle the Ohio Cave Gang by Stephen Meader, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss, Anne Frank–The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, and The Mystery of the Spanish Cave by Geoffrey Housebolt.
There were many more, but that’s a sampling of the books I read during my grade school days. At that time, in the 1950’s, a paperback book cost twenty-five or thirty-five cents. That was probably a lot of money to be spending on books by the parents of most of us at Smith, a one-room country school.
It was always exciting when the package arrived containing the books. There was something magical about receiving a book that was your very own to keep. The covers always had wonderful illustrations and we could hardly wait to start reading the selections we received. I should mention that the available books for reading in a rural school library were very limited. Our library consisted of one small bookcase at the back of the room. I don’t remember very many books in it.
After school, when I could sit down at home with my new books, I would lose myself in the story I was reading. I sailed down the Big River in search of pirates, or followed the adventures of the dog, Big Red. I had tears in my eyes when Old Yeller and The Red Pony died. I was there when Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher had their adventures together, and I sailed on the raft, down the Mississippi River, with Huck Finn and Jim. I lived the life of the Red Fox and was there in the den with the Gray Wolf. It gave me an appreciation for wild animals.
Books could take me places I had never been, and participate in adventures I would never otherwise have. I could go to all those places and experience all those things without ever leaving my room. Those books expanded my horizons and sparked my imagination. They let me explore fantasy worlds and real worlds. What wonderful things they were to me. I think those books from the Teen Age Book Club started me on the path to enjoying reading, and also writing.
They led to my first writing attempts. One of the stories I wrote was a pirate adventure. I don’t remember much about the story now, but I doubt if my great, literary gem would have rivaled Treasure Island. I wish I had a copy of that story now. Another writing attempt was a series of stories called, “The Adventures of Rocky Rooster,” illustrated of course. How many adventures could a rooster have anyway?
When we cleaned out the old farmhouse after my parents died, I was hoping to come across those old stories. We didn’t find any trace of them. I suspect they were thrown in the trash and destroyed years ago. Such literary treasures, up in smoke! I jest of course, but I would love to be able to read today what I wrote so many years ago.
Another of my literary gems was an illustrated story about a country mouse titled, “Under The Country Oak Tree.” I still have that one. It’s a real Shakespearean tragedy. The poor mouse dies in the end. I thought I had accidentally thrown it out when we were getting rid of “stuff” before we moved. I was glad when I came across it last weekend, as we moved the last of our stuff to Westby. Now the problem is, which box did I throw it in? At least I know where those old books are. They’re all in a special box.
The books we ordered from that book club, while I was in grade school, were very important to a young farm boy and they still are. Perhaps that’s why I saved them all these years. I wonder if other rural students still have some of their TAB books? To most people they’re just old, cheap paperbacks, but to me those books opened up a whole new world. They were worth every penny back in the 50’s, and they’re real treasures today.
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