Do You Remember?

[Maurice Naughton]

When I was a very little boy, my dad, always resentful that he had only a sixth-grade education, bought a set of books called the Harvard Classics Five Foot Shelf. It comprised 51 volumes of world classic literature compiled by Charles W. Eliot, in 1919. Eliot was then President of Harvard. Eliot had advertised that one could get a complete liberal education by spending 15 minutes a day reading his way through the collection. My dad took the hook. Probably did 15 minutes a day for two, three days.

 

I was a precocious reader as a tot, and remember pulling books off the shelf at random, reading bits and pieces.

 

One volume made a massive impression on me: It contained Æsop's Fables; Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's Household Tales; and a lot of Hans Christian Andersen. At quite an early age, I read them all, understood little, and was often scared shitless and made nightmarish in my sleep.

 

There were three volumes of poetry, starting with Chaucer, I remember. One of them had Edward Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, the first poem I ever memorized parts of.

 

There was also a poem called, I think, "The Whore on the Snowcrust," which I read when I didn't know what a whore was but I knew the poem was about sex and I found it disturbing. I just spent fifteen minutes with google, but I can't find clear reference to the poem.

 

I had, of course, "The Little Engine that Could," a great favorite, and something called "Eban the Crane."

[g.johnson]

Beatrix Potter. The Reverend Awdry's Railway books (Thomas the Tank Engine, etc.).

[Heather]

We have my grandfather's copy of Andersen's tales. "The Little Mermaid" is very different from the Disney version my daughter is familiar with and pretty frightening. Doesn't she get her tongue torn out?

Beatrix Potter. The Reverend Awdry's Railway books (Thomas the Tank Engine, etc.).

Ian got the original Awdry stories as a gift and he loves them. They're much less PC and more interesting (better vocabulary and meaner pranks) than the new product being cranked out. I hate how everything is super-sanitized nowadays.

[ghostrider]

Am I the only one left on earth who remembers the great pot smoker John Sinclair, or semi-legendary electric organist Lyman Woodward?

Having spent a year in Ann Arbor, I certainly remember John Sinclair. And the White Panthers & Plum Plamondon & MC5 & the Amboy Dukes & SVT.....

[Wilfrid1]

Am I the only one left on earth who remembers the great pot smoker John Sinclair,...

 

Manager of the MC5? I have the vaguest recollection that John Whiting knew him and that we once had a conversation about it. Am I joining the dots correctly, Maurice?

[Wilfrid1]

Oh, I also can tick:

 

The Phantom Tollbooth

 

Charlotte's Web - a pleasant surprise that I enjoyed it, as I have never been fond of spiders.

 

I preferred Alison Uttley to Beatrix Potter, and recently came across a perfectly preserved copy of one of her little rabbit stories, which I gave to my daughter.

 

Narnia. I first saw The Lion...(etc) in the library of a big, rambling old mansion owned by a wealthy friend of my father. It was loaned to me. Later the same day, I had my first experience with a Swedish sauna - truly traumatic.

 

My grandmother didn't have a five foot shelf of books, but she did have a little shelf with about seven or eight uniform volumes in red binding. I believe Andersen's tales was among them; possibly some Grimm; Robinson Crusoe, I think; and definitely Lamb's tales from Shakespeare.

 

I remember staying awake all night secretly reading Peter Pan by the light from a street-lamp outside my bedroom window. Later, I remember smuggling a transistor radio into my bed to listen to Radio Luxmebourg.

[Jaymes]

Can't really remember my first rock concert. I worked for a top 40 radio station in the mid-60's and our station put on most of the big concerts, so I got to go to a lot of them. Was often up on the stage with the other disc jockeys introducing the acts.

 

But here's a funny story...

 

Chuck Berry was coming to town. He was late and we were all backstage waiting for him. And waiting, and waiting.

 

Finally this skinny black guy showed up. He said that he was Chuck Berry's brother, and that Chuck had been held up with car trouble or something (don't remember the exact story) but that he (Chuck) had sent the brother on to tell us the news, and to do a few songs until Chuck could arrive. It was obvious that the brother had been drinking a little, but there was nothing new or unusual about musicians being slightly impaired from something.

 

So the brother gets on stage with the guitars and the backup band and starts singing. Now, it's obvious that he's completely wasted, but he's doing an okay job with the Chuck Berry tunes, so we let him continue.

 

Then in walks Chuck Berry and he looks at the stage and says, "Who's that guy?"

 

 

We had been royally had.

 

And here's another story.

 

James Brown was at the Kumquat Bowl in Orlando. Our radio station was not the promoter, but we had done all of the advertising, so we were all there. James and company was there, ready to go on, but the promoter had skipped town with the gate receipts. James had been paid the upfront money, but not his portion of the big money from the gates. He wouldn't go on until he got it.

 

I'll never forget him looking at our station owner and telling him, "There's going to be a riot, so get your people out of here."

 

Some quick-thinking person called the police. Whoever it was (I think it was the promoter's assistant) seemed to know which direction the promoter had gone. (Again, this has been 35 years, so I can't remember if it was the airport, or a highway or what). We all stood around the office waiting very tensely. James' people were talking about James in the third person, even though he was standing right there: "James ain't going on until James got the money in his hand." and stuff like that.

 

A good half-hour past the time he was supposed to go on, we could hear the pounding and screaming from the crowd, and it sounded like they were going to rip out the bleachers if they didn't see James. And soon.

 

Then we got a call from the cops. They had stopped the promoter with the bags of money. At first, James said he wasn't going on until he saw the money, but after he spoke with the cops, he agreed.

 

And he put on his cape and dancing shoes and out he went.

[foodie52]

Re; kids' books.

 

I was obsessed with the Childhoods of Famous Americans series. They were hardcover, bound in orange and the illustrations were all in silhouette mode. I loved them. When my kids became old enough to read them, I bought them all over again: now they are in paperback with real illustrations. When I started buying them for my kids, it used to weird me out to see the bios of JFK and "modern" famous Americans: all the ones I had read as a kid were about ancients like George Washington Carver and Clara Barton. It really reminded me how old I actually was!

[elyse]

Charlotte's Web was my first 'adult' book, but I had been reading smaller books of those mentioned here. Or bigger books with short chapters or short stories. My parents tell me I was an avid reader, but I can't remember most of it. How old were we all? I was six for Charlotte's Web.

[Jaymes]

I really, really loved Nancy Drew. I was especially enchanted by descriptions of her dashing about in her shiny red roadster.

 

When I could afford my first new car, it was a shiny red Austin Healy Sprite. I drove that until I had the money to move up in life to the shiny red roadster of my dreams - an Austin Healy 3000 Mark IV.

[Wilfrid1]

I am suprised you could do Charlotte's Web at six. I was reading proper books by seven.

[elyse]

So Charlotte's web is a proper book and six was early for it? Good for me!

 

I am supposedly smart, but entirely uneducated, with a dreadful memory. Where does that leave me? I am reading Harry Potter now. Rereading, actually.

[Daisy]

I loved the Mrs. PiggleWiggle series.

 

And later loved Ramona the Pest series.

 

Narnia Chronicles, James and the Giant Peach, The Phantom Tollbooth is just a wonderful story.

Oh my, I loved Mrs. PiggleWiggle too--and had completely forgotten about those books.

 

Another thread about childhood favorites.

[rancho_gordo]

We sometimes call my mother "Sue Barton" because apparently there was a series called "Sue Barton, Student Nurse" that she used to love. She went on to become a nurse, by the way, much as Jaymes went to be a go-go dancer after reading Nancy Drew.

[Jaymes]

We sometimes call my mother "Sue Barton" because apparently there was a series called "Sue Barton, Student Nurse" that she used to love. She went on to become a nurse, by the way, much as Jaymes went to be a go-go dancer after reading Nancy Drew.

 

Well, it was just so difficult to break into the 'famous girl detective' genre. In detective work, big boobs simply got in the way.