THE MORE NEWS I READ

started 1/4/25

THE MORE NEWS I READ………the more I think I got a lot better news coverage for a dime a day when I was a kid.

I got a big 8 page 8 column giant headlined front section (the news) with pictures and statistics. Then, another 8 page section all about the people who lived within a 30 mile radius of Indianapolis, part of which usually had a section of celebrity news. A third 8 page section was sports-in-season with photos and stats. Last, but certainly not least, a 4th 8 page section of classified ads, legal information right down to who’s getting a divorce. Then, the best part of the whole thing: the funnies, also known as the Comics,,,,and boy! were they great!

All that for 10 cents…..I don’t even want to know what the cost of all that is today, the way it all comes to me in emails, individual subscriptions and business magazines- – Electronically.

Indianapolis News (or Star), where are you!

Indianapolis had 3 newspapers in the ‘50s, the News, the Star, and the Times. Times was the weakest and it and the News were both afternoon delivery. The Star was a morning delivery —  but usually too late for my Dad to read before leaving for work, so we chose the Ne between the other two. The News- – all the news that was the news, all you needed to read, some you didn’t want to read, and some you didn’t understand!

Every day, from my Dad down to me (and that was a long line) the Headlines, the Editorial page, the Sports or the Comics produced conversations and opinions which would get started in the living room and carry on through supper, some even lasting into the bedrooms…… What an education tool! We all grew up knowing how to differ and not hate, how to laugh at each other’s mis-pronunciations, even how to bemoan “our team” defeats, and gloat quietly when our team one and a brother’s was defeated, and stay a strong family unit.

All that for a dime a day— the whole family.

My Dad had only a 3rd grade education yet, if he could get to it before one of us boys did it, he worked the crossword puzzle every day. After we were all gone from home (1960) he worked every day’s puzzle till he passed away in 1987. Still ringing in my memory is him asking any one of us, “What’s a 6 letter word for am star?” And most times we would reply, “Got any letters yet?” He says, “R is the last and T is the 3rd.” Then, usually more than one voice from all over the house would say, “Arthur!” – for instance. (Oh, if you don’t know who that is, it merely proves you didn’t yet live in the 50s.)

We learned as much at home from each other, the comics, the news and the editorial pages as we did in school, I think. Well, probably not in the basic 3Rs capacity, but how to get along in the world, how to argue without a fight, how to absorb all sorts of slings and arrows, wins and defeats, happiness and sadness, ad infinitum. 

About the 3rd grade education; Daddy told us when we were little they had to burn the school house down to get him out of the 3rd grade! The truth was after his 3rd year in a one room school in a tiny town in Kentucky the school caught fire and burned, probably by a lightening strike. There was no school board to petition for tax money to build a new one, so only the well-to-do families took their children elsewhere. My grandfather “reckoned,” he said, “that a 13 year old boy could just go to work!” (No, he wasn’t a 13 year old boy, but he knew his numbers and how to read, what more did he need from a school house?) Smartest 3rd grade graduate in the world!

After I told my parents about getting saved at home alone one night, Daddy encouraged me to read the bible, of course, and told me he learned to read better by the bible. When my mother gave me Daddy’s grandmother’s bible, published in 1885, she said Daddy told her his grandmother read him the bible by fireplace light every evening after supper (he lived with her for about 4 years between 8-12, I think) and that’s when he really learned to read. It’s interesting to note the font size in that bible is so small I have a hard time reading it with the best of lighting and wearing corrective glasses. By the fire light. Wow.

About the 3Rs—I heard from an early age that someone like Abe Lincoln, or Mark Twain or even maybe Will Rogers said that the 3Rs were “readin’, ‘ritin’ and ‘rithmetic.” Today’s Google search gives nothing of the sort (although, strangely, several references were made that people referred to them as Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic), and that it started in the 1950s by an Agriculture professor.

When I was about 25, a college student friend working part-time for me said that his professor told the class the original 3Rs were Reading, Recollection and Rhetoric. That always made sense to me, but that Google search never did turn up such a thing. What about you, where did you hear that came from? — the 3Rs

One last learnable thought from all that: my great-grandmother read to my father, yet he learned how to read because of it. How many of you had a teacher who read to you? I had two really good (teachers) readers, and I read to my kids who, of course passed me up at a really young age—Phap!

Thanks for reading, the Elder