By Shirley Noe Swiesz
Originally published on Journey of a Mountain Woman
Good morning! It truly amazes me that there are so many books available in today’s world. There were few to be had when I was a child. My dad and I were avid readers. I learned to read sitting in my daddy’s lap while he read the newspaper to me. He didn’t care how old it was and he would read every scrap of it. Once when I was eight or nine I heard him telling my brother about a book that he had read. It was rather spicy and he told me I was not to read it! Of course I did but could not understand much of it.
When I stayed with mama and daddy while my husband was on an isolated tour, I would go to town on the bus with my little girl and check out books at the new library. It was in an old feed store where once you could buy all sorts of seeds and things and the remnants of hay and animal food still lingered. The floor was a little off kilter and the shelves rather crooked. I loved it.
Mrs Evans, the librarian, had worked hard to get a library in our small town. She was the mother of a boy I went to high school with, Allen Evans. I am still friend with Allen and his sweet wife Susan although I never knew her back then.
Mrs Evans welcomed me back to give my first book signing and when I worked for the newspaper I did a story about her. She was an amazing woman and I loved her dearly. She was always rooting for me as a writer and a person.
I would check out books for dad, picking out things I thought he would enjoy. Some of you probably remember me telling you that daddy would pick up a book that I had started and read where I left off and then ask me about the first part of it. He said we could read twice as many books that way.
I have never known anyone that loved to read as much as he did. I would take boxes of old newspapers home to him and he would read them from back to front! Every article, every page! He was not choosy about what he read at all. Once I checked out a book about old time superstitions for him. He loved that book. He read that if a person was mean or had a grudge against someone they would come back as a snake or send snakes to torment that person ! Well he and granny argued all the time. He loved to get her going over something small. She fell for it each time. She told him that he would never live in her little house. Well he got sick and couldn’t work and my uncles convinced him to move into granny’s old house since it was empty and he wouldn’t have to pay rent. That summer he killed around fifty or sixty copperheads, just escaping getting bit each time. No one else came close to getting bit but daddy barely avoided it. Finally he couldn’t take it and moved.
I love reading almost as much as he did and I miss, after all these years, the conversations I had with him about books. I wanted so badly for him to write a book with me about his time in battle but he never would.
I don’t watch television much anymore more but I read way too much!
I often think of Mrs Evans and the people that encouraged me in life and there were many. God bless those people in the past who made life sweeter and gentler for the young people from ‘down the river’ and the hollers! Picture by Sami of her barn yard!