Vic­tor Apple­ton cre­ated boy heroes.

Some of the odd­est items in my col­lec­tion would have to be my boy-​hero nov­els from the early 190s to the 1930’s. No decent segue here — bear with me.…

I grew up in the days of long car trips spent play­ing either car tag bingo or lis­ten­ing to my par­ents talk about the past.

Oh, and say­ing, “Mom, John looked at me.”

One of my parent’s favorite con­ver­sa­tional games involved Tom Swifties. If you know about Swifties, smile. If you don’t, google Tom Swift and Vic­tor Apple­ton. For the unini­ti­ated, think Nancy Drew for boys with clever gram­mat­i­cal twists.

I began my col­lec­tion unwit­tingly. My dad’s books grace my shelves and when I rec­og­nized sim­i­lar types of books, Rob and I would grab them up for $1 — $2. This week I will begin to cat­a­log my col­lec­tion and scan some of the pages and covers.

Writ­ing about these books opens up a goose egg full of top­ics to blog about in the future.

Car trips with sib­lings in the 1960s.
How kids make their par­ents crazy, then grow up and have kids who make them crazy in the same way.
Spring­time in the Car­oli­nas — because I’m swing­ing on the front porch swing in March with Birks and shorts and the birds are all over the place, the apri­cot tree and the crabap­ples blos­soms are about to slam bloom.
Dogs and pretty weather. Neigh­bor­hoods.
The car­di­nals are back — an event which is so charm­ing and lovely I could weep.

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