During his early years, Daddy was quite happy with the kerosene lamp, an innovation at the time; Grandfather had grown up using candlelight. Since even matches were a scarcity in Grandfather’s early home, live coals had to be continuously maintained and were sometimes carried long distances for starting fires. So Daddy felt lucky to have a supply of matches and his fairly bright kerosene lamp.

During many long winter evenings, after early nightfall, the lamp created the ambience for family games of dominoes, pitch and chess.

One long winter when Daddy was 17 or so, he read every book from the lending library of the Mooney Allen Drugstore. His favorite stories were the adventure novels of Jack London and Rex Beach. In later years when I was a little boy he read Jack London’s Call of the Wild to me, in little installments every night, and I was enraptured.