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TI: Now, was there a conscious exposure when you were a child to this by your mother or your father?

CS: Oh, not (really). My father was not that literate, but my mother was. We always had books to read, and there was a library, and I remember as a child in the branch library that we had, going through the library and systematically reading every book they had. And then I got to one book, Pilgrim's Progress, that I could never understand. I still can't understand it. And I realized then that there was a limitation of learning through the process of reading without some assistance. If I had had the book assigned to me in a classroom with a professor teaching it, I could have understood it. But even now, if you show me a volume of Pilgrim's Progress, I'll go to the other side of the room, because, like, at eight, nine, ten, or eleven years old, I'm trying read Pilgrim's Progress, I didn't understand it then, and I don't understand it now. But the quest for learning through reading is, I think, the key to emergence from lower economic, lower social levels, to a totally functioning person in society, is read, read, read. And it never occurred to me that there was any other method by which one could become enlightened than by reading. And I'm very proud of the fact that in my immediate family, my wife is a voracious reader. She reads many, many books every week, and she's always finding a new book. She has books stacked over everywhere. But our children grew up the same way, and our children are now in their forties, and they are teaching their children that reading is an avenue towards full enlightenment. And I think that that is one of the things, if nothing else, that I have learned in growing up, is that the way to become a real person is to read, read, read. Experience is fine, but you don't have to have every experience for everything you read about. And you can read about and understand history, current events, science fiction, science, mathematics, whatever it happens to be, read, read, read, and the world belongs to you.

TI: Now, your appetite for reading, was that, was that unusual for a child in Lakeland to be like that? Or were others also the same, similar feeling towards, towards reading?

CS: It's sort of hard, because at the time I was growing up, I never thought to compare myself with others. The principal difference is that I did not engage in athletic activities like football and baseball and things like that. I was totally non-athletic. And so it was easier for me to put my head in a book and read it, than perhaps it was for somebody who would go out to play baseball. And the only non-reading activity that I was involved in was the Boy Scouts. I was a very avid Boy Scout growing up, and, but aside from that, that's the only extracurricular activity that I recall. But again, with reference to others in my neighborhood and in my school, even at the expense of being arrogant, I would think that perhaps I might have been just a little different than some of the others. I was always considered, quote, "a brain," unquote, a misnomer. But it's very easy for children growing up in a school context. They either would disparage you because of your academic approach to things, or they would admire you. And I was always two years younger than the people in my classes, because I started school at an early age, at the impossible age of three years. And so when I had classes with people who were twelve years old, I was ten. So they looked up to me because I was up-to-date on everything, simply because I was an avid reader. But again, that's oversimplifying a recollection of a background, and I don't want to give the impression that I was in any sense unusual or unique. But your question elicited that response, and it just occurred to me after all these years that maybe I was a little different.

TI: Well, yeah, especially you were two years younger than everyone else, and you were viewed as a, as, nicknamed "Brain," so I'm sure you were, you were very bright. Which, which kind of brings me to this next point. When you were about twelve, your parents divorced.

CS: Well, actually, that isn't quite true. My parents were divorced when I was sixteen. And news reports have been inaccurate in trying to put together that phase of my life. But if the question is designed to relate to my going to live with the Grays...

TI: Exactly. That's, that was the point --

CS: It was not in any sense related to my parents' divorce.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.