Thread: Been doing a Swedish Death Clean lately...

Thanks for sharing your memories - quite something you found your passion so young, and then proceeded to turn it into a career.

That's a gorgoeus chair (I don't know if it needs socks but I'm not going to argue with the maker), will you share the desk as well?

Great story and I'm glad you posted it here.

I spent 7 of my growing up years in the then small seaside town of Busselton in the 1960's. At home the only books we had were a small set of encyclopaedias and a handful of "Little Golden Books". The primary school I went to had a so called library consisting of a single bookshelf containing about a hundred books (yes I counted them), most of which were little kids books, and fiction like "Secret 7" and Famous 5" , but what I really wanted to access were books on science and how things worked. By the time I was 9 I had almost worked my way through all the larger books on the bookshelf and at that point I was dreading running out of books but my dreams were answered with the establishment of a local town library.

The town library had 3 sections, Children's, Adults, and Reference books which could not be borrowed. I started taking out books from the children's section on the day it opened and was able to take out 3 books at time. We were even allowed to leave the school at lunch time on Fridays to exchange books but that was not enough for me so I started stopping of on Tuesdays after school to exchange books and often just go and sit in the library and browse the BIG books from the reference section. I would sometimes stop off another day after school to borrow more books which I would read at school or at home and got into trouble a few times for "too much reading". The somewhat severe but observant librarian noticed I was borrowing a lot of books and so arranged for me to be able to borrow 5 books at a time. When I turned 10 the Librarian noticed I was spending a lot of time reading the reference books and she asked me what I was interested in and then she organised for me to be able to borrow 2 more books from the adults section which allowed me to access to the how stuff works and science books which is what I was really after. As you can imagine there weren't that many books on these topics and they were often well over my head (especially the maths) which really slowed me down which was fine. AT home I would experiment with some of these ideas in Dads shed using tools left to me by my carpenter Uncle who went OS and had never come back.

Later I also became interested in science fiction, history and biographies, the later two was what the librarian was also into and we had many discussions about these topics. I was always careful not to reveal too much of this "extra knowledge" at school especially in junior high school where as I was already known as the class "smarty pants" and there could be repercussions later in the playground.

These days I'm still into books, mainly audio books, and start reading a new book about every 3 days. My record for one year is 154 audio, 3 ebooks and 5 paper books. If any book gets too boring, off topic etc don't finish them but I usually finish about 4 out of 5. Its quite a different experience listening rather that reading and of course no pictures (charts/graphs/schematics etc) but if there's music involved sometimes that can be incorporated into the sound tracks. I often keep a tablet handy while I'm reading because if the book is about a journey or travels I sometimes follow the travels on Google Maps. If the audio book mentions something (including image related stuff) that piques my interest I may often stop and look it up on the tablet. Topics vary from military history, biographies, science, technology, science fiction, detective stories, social history. I also like some of the old classics and will listen to them several times as they are so beautifully written. Lately Ive been reading and listening to stuff on how the brain works, mental health and AI.

I ended up marring a librarian (Amanda) who was even madder about books than I was, mainly children's and young adult literature but also heaps of general and craft related stuff. The books I owned were mainly paperbacks given to me as gifts, and science text related to world or just cos. At most I only ever owned about 2 dozen books on wood and metal working. Many of the books Amanda brought home to read including science fiction and detective stories I would often end up reading - there was always an endless supply at our place. Amanda would often buy or bring me something obscure and say "you are probably interested in this" and I usually was. Amanda introduced me to Audio Books and I had a subscription through her library before subscriptions were available through local libraries.

Despite regular purges over the years we still collected several rooms full of paper books and even though Amanda managed a library she always had 5-6 books out from the local library and was always reading/listening to half a dozen books at a time. During the house clean up after Amanda passed away one of the saddest things I had to do was removed the book marks from her library books and return them to the library. Even though Amanda had been retired for 7 years I still found half a dozen craft books from her old library under a bed which I also returned. I took dozens of boxes of her books, including some of mine, to charity shops, antique book shops, and some to my sons place, and lots of old text books ended up in the recycling bin but it looks like I have hardly touched the sides of Amanda's collection. Amanda has an extensive children's book collection that I am trying to give away as a collection to a local children's museum. Ive kept a few text and reference books and my metal and WW books but have given away almost all my other paper books.

Originally Posted by Alkahestic

Thanks for sharing your memories - quite something you found your passion so young, and then proceeded to turn it into a career.

That's a gorgoeus chair (I don't know if it needs socks but I'm not going to argue with the maker), will you share the desk as well?

Just found the original (it's on the skids). This was way before digital cameras, mid eighties, so at some point I scanned the picture. Don't think there's a pic of the second one.

And the other pic is the most recent.

Funny story about it. Can't be seen in the pics but there's a bunch of scratches all down the front of the drop front. Our cat tried to climb it one day while we were watching TV. We both saw as he, unceremoniously, slowly scratched his way down the front. He'd misjudged the height and tried desperately to save himself when he fell short. He put it into 4 low and furiously clawed with all his might to no avail. My wife jumped up and put herself between me and the cat, saying: "No, no, don't. He didn't mean it!! You can't blame him..." She thought I was going to tear him apart. I just calmly walked over had a look and said: "Na, that just adds to its story. The most interesting things about old furniture is the marks they have and how they got them." And went and sat down again and carried on watching TV. She was dumb founded.


It might disappear yet, but wife isn't having any of it though. I'd like one more crack at it.

Originally Posted by BobL

Great story and I'm glad you posted it here.

I spent 7 of my growing up years in the then small seaside town of Busselton in the 1960's. At home the only books we had were a small set of encyclopaedias and a handful of "Little Golden Books".

SNIP

It's amazing how the simple things early in life can have such a profound affect on the next 60 years isn't it. For us at least it was a good outcome. Touch wood (my head that is ) LOL