On the end-table in what I call the “reading nook” in my house are ten little books. They are worn and weathered — understandable, because all are well-thumbed children’s books, each of them older than I am.
I have had them forever. (Well, for all of my life, which is forever to me.)
To be honest, the books are there mostly for display, as a way of announcing that this is a house that values certain things—things like children, and family, and reading. It’s the kind of display you might expect to find in a home where both my wife and I were schoolteachers — she in middle school, and I in high school.
And although they have been end-table “props” for a long time, last week our eight-year-old granddaughter Olivia came to spend the night, and she pulled one of the books off the end table and plunked down next to me. “Do you want me to read a book to you?” she asked.
“Of course!” I said.
It was “The Little Engine That Could.” Inside the tattered yellow cover was a name written in ink: David Kerth — Olivia’s father, our son. Also Jenny Kerth — Olivia’s aunt, our daughter. This was one of the books we read to them as they sat on our lap as little children more than 40 years ago. It was a book that my parents read to me when I was their age.
And as Olivia read it to me from cover to cover, my cheeks ached from my constant smile, even as my eyes welled with tears now and then.
You know the story — a train engine breaks down carrying toys over the mountain to good little girls and boys, and engine after engine refuses to haul the load, some through vanity or arrogance, and some through old age. But then a little blue engine agrees to try, though she is only a tiny engine meant for hauling railroad cars one at a time in the switching-yard. Still: “I think I can… I think I can…” the engine says, and she succeeds in pulling the toys all the way up and over the mountain, despite all doubts to the contrary.
It has been a long time since I read or heard that story, and I was mildly surprised to find that the little blue engine was a girl engine. I guess I always remembered the engine as being a boy, because children love to picture themselves as the hero of the story, don’t they? Anyway, it brought a smile to my face that Olivia could read a story where she could identify with a girl hero struggling valiantly and winning the battle, especially in a book written almost 90 years ago. It warmed my heart to know that good lessons like that were being taught so long ago, even if memory says otherwise.
After Olivia went home, I sat in the reading nook and started thumbing through those old children’s books that have been with me forever, but which I hadn’t examined in a long time.
One was an old schoolbook with a brown, tattered cover scarred with a child’s pencil scribblings. It was “The Rand McNally Elementary Geography,” published in 1894. “Willie J. Thompson” was one of the names written on the inside cover — my Uncle Bud. On the next page was another name: “Bertie Ross Thompson” — Uncle Bud’s father, my grandfather, who was Olivia’s great, great grandfather. It brought a smile to my face to see those names, each written in a child’s scrawl.
But when I opened the old text and read a bit, I found other old lessons that were taught to children a few generations ago.
Like Lesson 23 on page 41 — a chapter titled “Civilization,” which notes that the world’s people can be classed into categories based on their relationship to food, clothing and shelter.
For example: “There are countries in which the people do not seem to want very much more than the animals do.” These are people who live in huts and “cease working” once their most basic needs are met. “Such people live much like animals, and are called savages.”
Another group want a little better food and clothing, but not much more. They are called “barbarians.”
Still another group “have learned to want more and better things and to labor to obtain them.” They have “better taste than barbarians,” and they are called “half-civilized.”
And then there are those who want things of a more “refining nature,” things like “schools, churches, and many other things like those we have in our country.” These people are called “civilized.”
Further down the page we learn that “Most of the civilized people of the world belong to the white race. The savages belong to the red, brown, and black races. Most people of the yellow race are half-civilized” — although some credit is given to the “yellow people of Japan,” who are the only “colored” people who have become “civilized,” because “in recent years they have adopted many American customs.”
Well.
It’s clear why some books have endured for generation after generation as uplifting classics for our children to read, while other have rightly been relegated to be nothing more than decorative end-table props.
Still, with hate crimes bloated to sickening levels over the past two years, it’s also clear that there are some groups in “civilized” America who would love nothing more than to return to the teachings of an 1894 Elementary Geography text. And as we Americans polarize increasingly into warring tribes, can we ever find a way to overcome ignorance, hatred and prejudice, and to teach our children not only to accept our differences, but to embrace and celebrate them?
The struggle is exhausting, and at times it may seem that we will never rise above our divisions.
But…
I think we can…I think we can…I think we can….
Author, musician and storyteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.
