RIVER CITY JOURNAL: READING CAN MAKE A MOM PROUD

When you stop and think about the first book you ever owned, you have to push the little gray cells to remember that far back.

Recollecting how you became an avid reader has been prompted by a special event next week. In just a few days the streets of Cape Girardeau will be swamped, not by Mississippi floodwaters, but by hundreds of volunteers on street corners selling the 1994 YELL edition of the Southeast Missourian. Money from this effort will be used for youth, education, literacy and learning -- get it, YELL.

Several authors will share their own learning-to-love-reading experiences in the YELL edition Tuesday. There is something to look forward to.

When you were in the 1st grade and just learning to read, your mother found a way to hook you on books. It was clever, and it took years and years to figure out what she did. Here is how it happened:

Every Saturday when you went to town you would go to Toney's Drug Store for a cherry Coke or chocolate malt (with a free vanilla sandwich cookie -- what a deal). The drug store was a wonderland of cosmetics, drugs, grilled cheese sandwiches, comic books, flashlights, gifts -- and books.

One Saturday your mother pointed to a book and wondered if you would be interested. It was Robert Louis Stevenson's "A Child's Garden of Verses." You didn't even know what a poem was, but the idea of owning a book of your very own was glorious. The books you encountered were owned by Shady Nook School or the church Sunday school or the public library. You had no idea you could have a book to keep. Forever.

Yes, you said, you would very much like to have that book. Good, your mother said. You could buy it as soon as you saved enough money from your nickel-a-week allowance. Some of you will remember when a nickel was worth a pocketful of hard candy at the five-and-dime store, but you have to be pretty old to remember dime stores.

And so every Saturday you could hardly wait to go to Toney's Drug Store to look at your book. You were so afraid someone else would buy it first. Surely every 1st grader in the world was saving pennies and nickels too.

Sure enough, the savings plan worked. The big day arrived. You took your money -- about $2.95 or so -- and gave it to the red-haired woman behind the drug-store counter. She put the book -- your book -- in a Rexall paper bag, and as soon as you got in the car you began reading it.

And you never stopped reading.

Mrs. Berryman at the public library got to know you really well. She always asked, with raised eyebrows, if you intended to read all eight books -- the library limit -- you checked out each Saturday. Yes, you said, you would read them all. They would be read by Wednesday or Thursday, and you would agonize about having to wait until Saturday to get more books.

You read every book on the three shelves of juvenile books at the library. So you asked to check out books from the adult shelves. Mrs. Berryman didn't think it was appropriate for young minds to be exposed to adult themes, but your mother had a private conversation with her, and pretty soon you were taking eight full-length novels home every week. You never had to check out a book again to finish it. They all were read.

Your reading was indiscriminate. Good books. Bad books. Interesting books. Dull books. It didn't matter. They all could be read.

And when you ran out of books, there were cereal boxes and instructions on pesticide containers and tractor manuals. One of the biggest events in your childhood was when your mother purchased a brand-new set of World Book encyclopedias. Can you imagine the reading potential?

Your copy of "A Child's Garden of Verses" has disappeared. Perhaps your mother has it tucked away somewhere, waiting for you to ask about it. She has her trophy, and it isn't a book. It is a son who loves to read. She is a pretty proud mother.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.