Back when I
was nine, we lived in the middle of nowhere. I had only my classmates and my little
brother for friends. My class consisted
of twelve students, grades 2 through 8.
Only one other student my grade and he was a boy. My little brother had a triple-whammy of a
friend strike in that he was not only a boy, but younger. And my brother. So the characters in my books became my
friends.
Nancy Drew
was my first book friend. Although she
was older, richer and ran in a difference crowd than I did, I came to adore
Nancy, Bess and George. Although George
once caused a family argument. After my
second or third Nancy Drew book, I realized that I had no idea how to pronounce
G-E-O-R-G-E. I asked and an argument started
when they didn’t believe me that George was a girl. It was my first taste of not being believed,
even though I was so sure.
I was with
Nancy on all her adventures. I read as often as possible. Sometimes even more often than possible. My parents would tell me to stop reading and
go outside to play. I’d go, but sneak
my book with me. I got tired of the
wasted time biking somewhere so I rigged a book holder to my handlebars. Then I could read while biking our dirt
roads. Our house had no electricity and
thus a flashlight was brought to bed each night. My parents would wonder why my batteries died
faster than my brother’s. It was because
I often was up into the wee hours reading under the covers… only to rise early
to get through the next chapter.
In school,
my book reports were all Nancy Drew books.
We made a book as a school project and I made mine Nancy Drew
related. The public library was two
hours away and we visited only twice a month.
I would check out the maximum number of books (five) and they’d all be
Nancy Drew. One trip, I stayed home and
gave my parents strict instructions to get five Nancy Drew books and a chart of
which ones I had not yet read. They came
home with one Nancy Drew book and The Yearling, requesting that I broaden my
reading knowledge. I still can’t even
talk about that dreadful day and I still have not read The Yearling, nor can I
speak its title without making a face.
Once I went
through the whole Nancy Drew series, I ventured to another section of the
library series shelves and noticed books that looked like Nancy Drew. Cherry Ames.
Cherry was a nurse. In every
book, she was a different kind of nurse.
Student Nurse, Army Nurse, Cruise Nurse.
I of course read two and then wanted to be a nurse. My freshman year of
high school I even was in a club for future medical professionals. That’s when I found out nurses give shots and
clean up poop. And that was the end of
my Cherry Ames nursing career. The
Cherry Ames books were hard to find, though, so I read only four or five of the
series.
For my
eleventh birthday, I received a $20 check from my grandfather. Mom took me to K-Mart in Milpitas, California
to pick something out and I chose the first four Trixie Belden books. I remember Mom questioning me. “Are you sure you want books? Not toys or a game or clothes? Books?
Really?” and I really did. I read
those first four books, Secret of the Mansion, Red Trailer Mystery, Gatehouse
Mystery and Mysterious Visitor, over and over again.
Trixie and
Honey and Jim and Brian and Mart and Bobby and all the others traveled with me
on the move to Minnesota. And the move
back a few months later. I had only four
books, but I made good use of them, over and over again. Our libraries didn’t have Trixie Belden
books, so after moving back to California, I started earning money
babysitting. I’d take that money to
Stacey’s bookstore at Stanford Shopping Center and spend it collecting the
series. I even re-purchased Secret of
the Mansion, as I’d loaned it out never to be seen again.
Every bit of
the Trixie Belden series is imbedded in my mind. I can close my eyes right now, over 30 years
later, and picture Trixie’s home, Honey’s mansion, and the trailer they had a
number of adventures in. I can picture
Nancy Drew’s house, her father’s briefcase, her car. I can close my eyes and see Lex admiring
Cherry’s nurse uniform and the hopeful faces of her injured and sick patients
watching her approach.
The feeling
I get though when I close my eyes and imagine the time I spent with all these
friends makes me glow. Real friends are great. But real friends who you can share books with? Priceless.
P.S. Earlier this year, I got tired of my
ten-year-old daughter only reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. I assigned her the first Trixie book, Secret
of the Mansion, to read for school. Now
she can’t say Trixie Belden without making a face and I do believe that she
will never pick another up again. Or any
of my other suggestions. Sorry about The
Yearling, Mom. Now I know how you felt.
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