Take the Inside Road

by Donna Poole

When winter backroads ooze with mud or wear a coating of ice, I take an inside road. Books take me anywhere I want to go. February is a good month to read; it’s National Library Lovers Month. The second week of February is also Freelance Writers Appreciation Month. Okay, you can sit down now; that’s long enough for the standing ovation.

I wasn’t one of those early, natural readers. In the 1950’s we didn’t use the term “learning disability.” Kids were either smart or dumb; nice adults never said which, but we kids quickly put ourselves into one group or another.

I knew what group I was in. We had four reading groups in school; I’m sure the first group wasn’t the bluebirds and the last group the crows, but that’s how I remember it. There really needed to be a fifth group just for me, the dead-road-kill-crows. I rode home on the yellow school bus, my report card in my hand. With every bounce of the seat my brain said, “dumb, dumb, dumb,” and panic kicked in. Mom didn’t suffer fools gladly, and I knew exactly what she was going to do about the Big Red U in reading. I was half-way through second grade and couldn’t read one word, not even “dog” or “cat”.

I don’t remember the spanking. I do know Mom sniffed with disapproval when she discovered the school was teaching reading by the “see-say” method: look at the picture, memorize the word, recognize the word without the picture. She got phonics materials, and in the evenings, when my siblings went to bed, she sat up with me and tried to drill phonics sounds into my brain. Mom was not patient, but she was persistent. I was going to read, or one of us was going to die in the process.

I thought I was going to die. I prayed I would die. I begged to go to bed. I just could not get it.   

Until that night. Suddenly, a light switched on in my brain. Phonics made sense. I could sound out words; I could read! I fast-tracked from the crows to the bluebirds and got into trouble for reading ahead in the book because I didn’t want to wait for the others who couldn’t keep up with me.

I can’t imagine what my life would have been like without Mom. If you can’t read at school, you can’t do much else either. Looking back, trying to self-diagnose my learning disability, I’m guessing it was a combination of visual perception problems and dyslexia.

Thanks to Mom, I’ve meandered many backroads in my reading.

When I was a kid, I devoured books. I didn’t just read them; I lived in them. I found wonderful families, friends, and adventures, and I joined them in my imagination. I loved Charlotte’s Web, The Five Little Peppers, Little Women, Little Men, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Pollyanna, and so many more.

Mom and Dad had a collection of children’s books. Each volume was a different color; the book of fairy stories was red. I wore that book out. I enjoyed the book of mythology too. I even read some of the dictionary.

I loved Bible stories, especially ones about Jesus. If I felt lonely at night, I scooted over to make room, patted the edge of the bed, and invited Jesus to sit. I fell asleep, sure He was there, smiling at me, keeping me safe.

As I got older, I read book series: Cherry Ames, Hardy Boys, and my favorite, Nancy Drew.

Life wasn’t always easy when I was a little girl. I was a stubborn child and refused to cry about anything in my life, but I cried about what happened to the characters in my books.

Dad walked by one day when I was reading and crying. “You know you’re crying about more than that book, don’t you?” he asked.

I looked up at him, shocked. I think that was probably the most astute thing my dad ever said to me.

Reading both kept me out of trouble and got me into trouble, like it did when we were getting ready for a rare family trip to town.

 “How in the world can you have no clean clothes?” Mom scolded. She looked through my sister Mary’s clothes. Mary didn’t have any clean clothes either, but she had something new.

New clothes were even rarer than a trip to town. I don’t remember where Mary got the skort, a short, white pleated skirt attached to white shorts.

Mom bit the tags off and handed me the skort as Mary watched sadly. “Put this on, and don’t you dare get dirty before we leave.”

What could I do and not get dirty? My books! It was a beautiful day, so Nancy Drew and I carefully climbed a tree with low branches, sat there, and I started to read. All went well until I forgot I wasn’t inside on the couch and leaned back. When I fell out of the tree, I landed on a barbed wire fence. I didn’t get a scratch, but Mary’s beautiful new skort wasn’t as lucky. That barbed wire neatly ripped that skirt right off those shorts. You don’t want to know the rest of the story.

I kept reading voraciously as an adult until I had brain surgery. After that, reading was almost impossible for a while. I never lost the ability to read words, but by the time I got to the second paragraph on a page, I couldn’t remember what I’d read in the first. Reading wasn’t fun; it was frustratingly hard work. Years passed before I could really enjoy a book, and even now I read much slower than I did. That’s okay though, I thank God I can still read!

I love my books; I have some good friends between dusty, old, hard covers. My books, and especially my Bible, have made me who I am today.

So, who am I today? Well, if you psychoanalyze me by the books on my bedside table, I’m one strange lady! I have fiction books, two great devotionals, a dictionary cataloging death by poison, shooting, suffocation, drowning, and strangling from 1900—1950 in London, a book of Puritan prayers, a mystery about a murder in Mackinac, and a writer’s market guide.

I’m too old to worry about who I am; I’ll leave that to my progeny. I have more important things to worry about, like how am I going to live long enough to meander down all the backroads in these books? And that reminds me. Family, when I die, don’t donate my books before you let the readers among you choose any they want. I’m pretty sure someone will want my dictionary of murder. And should my death seem at all suspicious, dust that book for fingerprints. Just in case.