Isn’t reading important anymore?

When I was a kid, I learned how to read while sitting in my grandmother’s lap long before I went to school.

She used to read to me out of children’s storybooks full of fairy tales and folk tales.

As she read the same stories over and over, my little eyes would wander over the letters and I memorized them. I was probably 5 when I astounded her one day by picking one of the books up and reading it on my own.

As a kid, my grandfather used to take me to the barber shop down in Kermit where we got our hair cut. The barber there liked children and had plenty of magazines to read while waiting, including comic books for the kids.

I really liked Batman a lot and the barber used to let me have the Batman comics he’d have in his shop.

I still remember reading an old issue of “Brave and Bold” where the caped Crusader and Sgt. Rock teamed up to take down Hitler, who was still alive, being as he was really the Devil! It was the scaryest thing I ever read as a kid.

Being able to read on an adult level really benefited me in elementary school. Back in those days, the school systems in Kentucky used to sell us kids a lot of stuff. One thing I remember buying in first grade was a leather bookbag that looked a lot like an old fashioned doctor’s bag and it had our school logo on the side.

So here I was, all of six years old roaming the hallways of Warfield Elementary with this empty leather satchel.

At the end of the school year, my teacher, Opal Marcum, took me into a storage room and stuffed that bag to the breaking point with a bunch of hardcover books.

There was Mark Twain.

There was Charles Dickens.

There was Jules Verne and many other classic authors.

Mrs. Marcum told me that if I read them all over the summer I could have them. And I did.

The next year, she took me to the school library and explained to the librarian that I was a good reader and arranged it so I could check out as many books as I wanted a week. The other kids were limited to three.

I can even remember some of the books I read back then, including one on Chinese folk tales. I even have some of the books I bought at book fairs back then, like “The Invisible Man,” and “Frankenstein.”

Life could be pretty drearie in a small coal town in the early 1970s, but through the magic of literature I could travel all across the universe and through time thanks to the magic of books.

My mom moved back from Huntington about then, and she used to take me to the public library over at Inez, Ky., and let me check out books, too.

Through most of my life, I have had two great loves relating to reading — books and comics. For many years now, that love of reading has served me well and I make my living as a wordsmith.

When I moved to Logan many years ago, I was happy because at that time, Logan had a bookstore — OnCue — at the Rita Mall. Every time I went to Man I would stop and browse and buy books and magazines. From talking to the staff there, I understand that the store had good sales, even if the rest of the chain didn’t.

I was dismayed when it eventually closed.

However, for many years I have been content that the local Walmart had an excellent book section, much better, in fact than book sections at other Walmart stores in the region. Some of the best books I have read in the past decade, such as “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy, I purchased there.

Our only book store is 50 miles away in South Charleston at Books-A-Million at the Dudley Farms shopping plaza.

I think it’s sad that as important as reading is, there isn’t a book store in Logan County. I know my life has been enriched because of the power of reading and my niece and nephews are benefiting today due to that same love of the written word that I benefited from as a kid.

If we can support video game stores, multiple cigarette stores, gun shops and other stores in a town this small, surely we can support a book store. I know every time I go to Books-A-Million, I run into people from Logan.

Logan is full of people who love to read. Somebody somewhere is really missing the boat by not catering to that crowd.