I think I started to learn about reading when I was in kindergarten. My parents would go to Thriftway for grocery shopping on Friday evenings. I was allowed to purchase two comic books. My mom helped me learn to read. I’ve been reading ever since. My wife, Peggy, on the other hand learned to read at the age of birth plus one day. I don’t know what held her back.
My mom would take me to the downtown Tacoma library and I would choose some books while she looked at books of her choice. What really turned me on to reading was my fourth-grade teacher Mrs. Lindholm. I was in a fourth grade/fifth grade class. Mrs. Lindholm would read a chapter every day. Two of my favorites were Winnie the Pooh, as well as The Iliad and The Odessey. I remember when I had measles, my mom stayed home and read a chapter from the Iliad. One of my favorite early books was Cowboys and Cattle Trails. I think I used it as the same book report for three or four years.
What really got me into really reading was when my parents bought a motel in Lakewood (Ponder’s Corner). I began renting rooms from the seventh grade on. My parents would leave me alone to run the motel sometimes when they went out to dinner or to a motel association meeting. I was allowed to walk to a small grocery store just down the highway. I would buy whatever I wanted for dinner and a paperback book. Westerns and Science Fiction were usually my choices. As I got a little older, I made more money working at the motel and once I had the entire second floor as my private library, plus a pool table. I started buying classics of great writers . . . and more Science Fiction.
Peg’s mom would take her seven children to the South Tacoma library once a month. Peg persuaded her mom to let her take out eight books a month. As the other kids got older, they took advantage of the process, too.
Once I had my driver’s license, I would sometimes be sent to stay the weekend with my grandmother who ran a second motel near Parkland. Often during the summers, I would sleep in the back bedroom of the house/Motel office. If I had a great book I would sometimes read until the early light of morning.
I have been known to be stubborn. In the tenth-grade English class I had a teacher I liked and even suggested in private several different books I had enjoyed that she might want to share with classes. As the class drew to the end of the quarter, I had not actually commented on anything in class. I was content to know I knew what I needed to know. On the last day in class, a friend made a comment about a book and then turned her head looking directly at me and said, “What did you think Don?” I gave my opinion and my friend and my teacher both gave a sigh of relief. I just smiled.
Later high school I expanded my reading to clothes, music, theater, film, and more via Playboy Magazine. A friend mentioned that she had been quizzed by her teacher about a make-up test I had taken about the ancient Greeks. I had taken the test at a desk in the hall. I had aced the test. The teacher asked my friend if she thought I might have cheated. My friend simply looked at the teacher and said, “Why would he have to?”
As an art major at the University of Puget Sound I continued to read. At the last dance of the year, I attended a school dance and as the last song of the night was beginning, I asked a cute, short girl to dance. She looked at her tall friend and then back at me and said, “You mean me?” I think it was our second date where we discovered that we both loved to read. We were married about five months later.
A few years ago, our friend, Dell Dennison came to us asking for help. She had published a successful book on business from Self-Council Press (United States/Canada) in the Business Series. She had signed an agreement to write three books. She was having trouble coming up with two more books. We put our heads together and Peg and I signed up for writing three books (two with Dell). Our first book was “Producing a First-Class Video for Your Business”. The book sold well. Our second book was “Out of Work? Get Into Business.” Our third book and the final book with Dell was “Look Before You Leap: Market Research Made Easy.” I don’t know how many books were sold of “Look Before You Leap,” but they were sold in several different languages from around the world.
When Peg worked for the Tacoma’s Metro Parks department, she was already experienced in video production and went with Fred Yomes, a Tacoma city cameraman to Metro Park facilities to tape for the Park Bench program that was airing on the city’s TV station. Peg would take the tapes home, look over the footage and, in discussion with Fred, write the script, put in titles and Fred would edit and load it up to show.
That experience led to her being asked to go to Guam and record the 40th Anniversary of the liberation of Guam from the Japanese, complete with American soldiers storming to beach. We also went to Palau and Ponape. We went with Paul Jackson, a programing director on KBTC who hosted a travel show. His contact with a person from Continental Airlines also helped that we had the portable equipment.
Peggy has helped a number of writers with their first books. The last one just had a book come out in September, 2023. She got a big thank you from the Seattle writer. It was sent to her as a recording of his presentations. As she’d done for a previous author, it was laborious erasing the uhs, um, and other expressions.
Peg has been in a number of women’s book groups and continues to read twenty or more books each month. I still enjoy reading but, my left eye doesn’t work as well as it used to. For years I’ve belonged to a men’s reading group. I stay in touch. I enjoy discussions, and keep thinking I’ll rejoin the monthly meetings. One of my favorite gatherings was about a book Peggy highly recommended. It was about trees and how trees work and talk to each other to bolster the lives of the others in the area. One friend just rolled his eyes when I suggested the book. When we gathered and shared tree stories, it was interesting to note that every single member of our group had a favorite tree at one time or other . . . even my friend who hated the book acknowledged he had a favorite tree.
Currently, I am an avid reader of the magazines Archaeology and World Archaeology. Archaeology is my favorite magazine because page 20 of each issue has information from around the world with eight to ten stories, and quite often there will be something about the Pacific Northwest. When I see an article from our corner of the Earth, I write something interesting concerning our past and share the latest interesting details with our friends and neighbors via The Suburban Times.
