Alicia Bradley's Literacy Journal

      Growing up a dairy farm seems to be almost a universe away from growing up in a community neighborhood. The older siblings become grown-ups quickly on a farm, and that was the case with my family. My brother was, well, a boy. In a farm family, boys are expected to learn about machinery and be as useful as possible outdoors.  The oldest sister in the family became the cook, the baker, the head of the laundry, and the caregiver of the younger siblings. She had already developed a love of reading because books became her vacation spots. She was very much an artist and would create illustrations of scenes from her novels. She loved to read to her two younger sisters, especially me. However talented and wonderful she was, she was not a reading instructor.

            As I headed off to half-day kindergarten, I went armed with only the love of stories. I knew my A,B,C’s and could spell my name, but I had no other real awareness of how all those letters worked in unison to create the words I had been listening to.  Our grandmother-like teacher was amazing! She had labeled the room, plastered our names by our seats, on the backs of our chairs, and above our coat hooks. We worked on sounds in every way possible, in every place possible. Before I knew it, I gained the phonemic awareness that I had been missing. But I was still behind. When I moved on to first grade, but my word attack and spelling skills were not well-developed. I was not a terrible reader, but I was not proficient enough to be in the “bluebird” group, which was the highest level of readers. It made me sad and uncomfortable, so I read more and more at home and at my grandmother’s. Soon I was attacking every book I could get my hands on. I was skimming over the words I couldn’t sound out just to get the story line, and my technique seemed to work. It helped me figure out the meaning through context which was something not mentioned by a teacher until I reached third grade.  

      I was a quiet child. I was meek and mild, maybe because my older siblings were outspoken, and I really never had much time to speak. My mom’s voice was overpowering as well. I retreated to storybooks and found treasures in each one. I may not have known every word, but it didn’t matter; my mind filled in the gaps. I could put myself in each plot and disappear for awhile. I transferred my love of reading to my baby sister, Mary Beth, who was born when I was nine. To pay the hospital bill, my mom went back to work after Mary Beth was born, and Dad was already working at the paper mill and milking our cows. I became Mary’s sitter. I learned how to change diapers and warm a bottle. When she was big enough to sit up, I entertained her with picture books, and later stories. Today, she teaches high school English. Throughout the summer months of my time in middle, high school, and college years, my older siblings sent their kids home to the farm for my free babysitting service. Every night, we would pile into one bedroom, climb under covers, and I would read a chapter to them. Sometimes, they would beg for more pages … and of course, I would give in.

      When you meet my father you would never guess his deep love of literature. He speaks with a perfect hillbilly-from-Kentucky accent. Knowing his family history would confirm your suspicions of meeting a man of little education. He was born into a family of eleven kids, not all of them making it to adulthood. He grew up in a makeshift, one-room, hand-hewn log cabin, and that was a luxury because their previous home had been a chicken coop with as many as eight living in it at once. When my dad was thirteen, his mother died of either cervical cancer or a tubal pregnancy. By the age of fourteen, my dad’s father had drank himself to death from pure sorrow. This left behind a passel of children, all of whom needed to be cared for by my dad and his older sister who had just married. My dad left his formal schooling behind and went to Green Bay to work in a factory for five dollars a week. He saved money to pay rent and sent the rest home to help care for the younger siblings. His yearning for education and a better life became strong. As there was no television, he read whatever he could get his hands on. He read and learned. When he turned eighteen, he had saved enough to pay in full for his first car, $535. With a new car and new determination, he returned home to his family and found a higher paying job and eventually bought the 400 acre farm I grew up on.

     On any given Sunday after church, my dad would pick up newspapers from the local grocery store and read. The best part was when he had read his way through to the “funnies”. He would convulse with laughter in enjoyment of this section.  He loves books on history and old-time country music stars. He drew caricatures of men he worked with at the paper mill. He still sings songs and makes up his own rhymes, but my favorite time was in the barn while milking cows on a cold winter’s night. My father, who never had an education past the eighth grade, would recite his favorite poem he had learned when he was in his one-room schoolhouse as a sixth grader. His voice would drop and become dead serious as he began, “There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold …” It would send tingles down my spine as I stared out at the snow and listened intently to his perfect recitation of “The Cremation of Sam McGee” by Robert W. Service.  At age of 89 he can still give you chills as he tells this tale. His prosodic reading style was further motivation for me to become the best reader I could possibly be.

     My grandmother was the epitome of Wonder Woman. This little powerhouse stood less than five feet four inches tall, but could balance work and family better than anyone I have ever known. Grandma worked at the courthouse as a stenographer for over thirty years, raised five children, maintained a huge garden, collected eggs from her own chickens, harvested raspberries for sale from her domestic plants, and ran a household while her husband worked on the railroad. Somehow, she still had time to cook amazing meals from memorized recipes. I was always astonished that she could transcribe her shorthand notes from court cases into typed documents while holding a full conversation about everything from soup to nuts. She attempted to teach me shorthand when I was in middle school, but the complicated system never took hold. However, her love for reading while listening to soft music on the radio has remained one of my favorite pastimes. In a corner of her living room, she had an arsenal of reference books surrounding her typewriter. While she used these for her work, she also referred to them for solving every crossword puzzle that came across the kitchen table. I was her first grandchild to go to college, and she armed me with a portable typewriter and a huge dictionary I still have today.