Jean’s Story – Part 3 – The Teenage Years

The Bookworm

Much to my relief, after frequent transfers and moves during my early years, my father finally was able to stay as pastor at the same church for four years, which luckily happened to be during my complete high school education.  I had been afraid that we would have to move and I wouldn’t graduate with the same friends I had known since 9^th grade. We now lived in the very small isolated town of Boyers, PA, which had no high school, so that meant a 13-mile bus ride every morning and again back home in late afternoon, a long trip with frequent pickups on winding country roads, to Grove City High School.

Since teaching as my chosen future career was firmly entrenched by this time, none other even lightly considered, there was no question that I would take the college-prep track throughout high school, but what subject area would be my concentration?   I didn’t enjoy math and science classes and found it took extra effort to maintain the high grades in those that I could easily attain in all my other subjects.  More skill with words rather than numbers led to the obvious choice:  I would take classes that would start preparing me to become a high school English teacher.

This was probably not a surprising choice since I had always been a bookworm.  Actually, I don’t remember being “taught” to read.  I just remember Daddy reading aloud from a big Bible in his lap during nightly family worship.  Often, he would point to a short simple verse and ask if I wanted to “help” him read that. I was just a tiny little girl but I managed to struggle through the words, albeit with a lot of his help along the way.  It doesn’t seem that it took very long until I needed less and less help even when the passages he chose became quite longer with more “big words.”

From early childhood I carried a book with me constantly so I was never bored when I had a bit of spare time.  I liked curling up in a soft over-stuffed chair and reading a whole book at one seating.  I was a super-fast reader (a skill that has been valuable my whole life) and often finished one book and started another one the same day.  However, my mother put her foot down and limited me to one book a day so “you don’t ruin your eyes.”  I complied since I was afraid I would go to hell if I disobeyed a parent! But after I was little older, I finally convinced her that this was “cruel and unusual punishment” and thankfully she lifted those limits.

Since I could zip through all my school reading assignments quickly, I had a lot of time for leisure choices. At an early age – perhaps still in first grade – I discovered book series.  So when I read – and loved – my first Bobbsey Twins book, I prowled libraries constantly to find more books about their adventures.  I still remember the intensity of my feelings when reading The Bobbsey Twins and Baby May. Would the family be able to find the parents of the foundling baby abandoned on their doorstep?  I could hardly breathe until I got to the end of the book!

As I got a little older, I found the Nancy Drew mysteries – and had a goal to read every one ever written.  I did the same for the Hardy Boys books – although I never thought those boys’ adventures were as interesting as Nancy’s!  Actually, that love of mysteries has continued for over 70 years and today my favorite TV shows are stories about how detectives solve real-life crimes.  When I was a little girl I wanted to be like Nancy Drew and now I sometimes wonder if I had known about forensic science in my teenage years would I have chosen to be a crime investigator instead of a teacher?

Early Frugality

Continuing to absorb all the lessons learned growing up in a family where thriftiness was next to godliness, one of the highlights of these teenage years was achieving one of my long-time “grown-up” ambitions – to get a paying job.  The opportunities in our tiny town were almost non-existent, but I never stopped looking.  And finally, at age 16, I was offered a job as a clerk in the little country store down the street from our house.  It was only for a few hours a week and the pay was just a pittance – no government minimum wage rules were considered here – but I knew I would be starting on my way to financial greatness if I spent this income wisely.  I knew if you wanted to be frugal you had to set up a budget.  So I wrote up a detailed list with my income and expenditures, a routine I would continue for the next 63 years, right up to this present day in 2018.