The Focal Point/Serendicity Factor — 2
Dear Mr. Lake,
I always use graphics. A distraction. A distillation. Don’t you love how I’m not doing that here, today?
So you saw Part 1. 1963. It wasn’t the first instance, just the most dramatic when it’s happening to a mere child. Time compression.
It started before that. Been putting off the massive documentation of what I call the ‘Magic 7,’ the years when I could read and act before I got sent away to school at the age of 13.
I’d read hundreds of books by then. Not an exaggeration. 1963 was just a particularly intense departure from a reading splurge that can’t be fitted neatly into a normal boyhood of coaster brakes, accidental murder of a rabbit, Tonka trucks in the dirt pile, and the most sensational Lionel train and slot car plus all my custom creations in the attic you ever saw. Cedar twigs, plaster of Paris topology, hand-made and hand-painted exoticars in the infield, and buildings correct to the last detail, including the ticket booth for the sports car races. Little Egypt out back, where I could and did go for hours at a time, pure wilderness for a kid who needed to be the Swamp Fox and every western star you ever heard of.
The books though. I’ve spent months collecting pictures of them. Blogger can’t handle them. Still working on that. I have them though. We had a library at home. I read it, most of it, on radiators, windowsills, and under the covers...
[More to Come...]
I always use graphics. A distraction. A distillation. Don’t you love how I’m not doing that here, today?
So you saw Part 1. 1963. It wasn’t the first instance, just the most dramatic when it’s happening to a mere child. Time compression.
It started before that. Been putting off the massive documentation of what I call the ‘Magic 7,’ the years when I could read and act before I got sent away to school at the age of 13.
I’d read hundreds of books by then. Not an exaggeration. 1963 was just a particularly intense departure from a reading splurge that can’t be fitted neatly into a normal boyhood of coaster brakes, accidental murder of a rabbit, Tonka trucks in the dirt pile, and the most sensational Lionel train and slot car plus all my custom creations in the attic you ever saw. Cedar twigs, plaster of Paris topology, hand-made and hand-painted exoticars in the infield, and buildings correct to the last detail, including the ticket booth for the sports car races. Little Egypt out back, where I could and did go for hours at a time, pure wilderness for a kid who needed to be the Swamp Fox and every western star you ever heard of.
The books though. I’ve spent months collecting pictures of them. Blogger can’t handle them. Still working on that. I have them though. We had a library at home. I read it, most of it, on radiators, windowsills, and under the covers...
[More to Come...]
Just for reference, what were a few of the books? The favorites or the standouts? Were they all adult books, beyond the level of other kids your age? Were they mostly of a specific type or did they run the full gamut? Reading loomed large for me, and I spent a great deal of time in libraries, but I read dozens of books over a year, not hundreds. I can imagine them shaping your mind even as you became your own person with a destiny to write.
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