Posted on by Phil Strawn

A Young Scholar Among Jabbering Idiots


Thanks to my late favorite aunt, Norma Lavender, I became a scholar early in life.

Five-year-olds are stuck between that titty-baby stage and graduating to sandlot baseball and comic books. If life got tough, I could still console myself with a grimy thumb to my mouth, and a skinned knee sent me squalling to momma. I couldn’t tie my own sneakers or button a shirt.

My pushy aunt realized my floundering ways and rescued me with books. She got her hands on the first two years of Fun With Dick and Jane, the books the Fort Worth school system used to teach kids to read; comic books would have to wait; Micky Spillane and Mike Hammer were calling me.

Aunt Norma quizzed me like a Perry Mason for a year, teaching me to write and read. By my sixth birthday, I was a reading Jesse, a child phenom, and a leper to my neighborhood gang. They could barely write and couldn’t read a lick of anything. Here I was, a young Shakespeare among a crowd of jabbering idiots.

Having given her parenting rights to her sister-in-law for a year, my sainted mother has now stepped in to reacquaint herself with her young scholar. I still couldn’t tie my sneakers and applied too much Butch Wax to my flat-top haircut. My mother was a hard-core Southern Baptist, and I didn’t understand why when I colored outside of her parental lines, she would cross herself and say a prayer right before she administered a righteous butt whooping with her favorite weapon; a 9inch by 12-inch Tupperware cake holder. To this day, I won’t touch a piece of Tupperware.

I was assigned a weekly Micky Spillane paperback and expected to read the entire book. Looking back, those trashy, noir detective books were not fit for a child or an educated adult, but Aunt Norma would read a book in 24 hours and was quite an educated gal. I didn’t understand most of what I read, but a few phrases stuck with me: “Is that a pistol in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?” “A hard man is good to find?” Mike Hammer was always in trouble with a trashy broad. I shared my new vocabulary with the gang, and they dug it.

Mother started receiving phone calls from the other moms, blaming me, her little boy, for teaching their uneducated idiots smutty language. The Tupperware storage pan came out of the cabinet, and my butt burned for a week. Aunt Norma gave me Mark Twain and Huckleberry Finn to reprogram me. I dreamed of someday becoming Mark Twain, a kid with a Big Cheif tablet and a handful of Number 2 yellow pencils stored in a Tupperware container.

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16 Replies to “A Young Scholar Among Jabbering Idiots”

  2. Good yarn from the past. I still love and re-read both those guys, Spillane and Twain — two honest writers who didn’t pull punches. Throw in Hemingway and you got a trifecta of excellence.

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  3. Good yarn from the past. I still read both those guys, Spillane and Twain, two honest writers in their own right — throw in Hemingway and you got a trifecta of excellence/

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    2. Phil, that ‘Anonymous’ was me, Michelmore, god knows why is says anonymous and i dont know why there are two of them — computers!

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      1. I’m not sure why WordPress is doing this, but I will get to the bottom of it. They’ve become the FaceBook as far as glitches go. Thanks for the heads up.

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  4. There must be something to reading early business. For me it was Sad Sack, Mutt & Jeff & Casper the Friendly Ghost. Parents had me in 1st grade at age 5. Never experienced that Tupperware punishment for which I’m grateful. Awesome writing.

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  5. Literature is more than reading.  It is how one generation stays rooted in the dominant culture and manages to stay there for the balance of their lives.  Your story took me back to when I was between 8 and 10 years old.  I was not a child prodigy like you, but I had my timeline for breaking out of the toddler stage.  But like you, I was reading Micky Spillane, Shell Scott, and Lew Archer without any clear idea of what a cleavage is.

    Much later in life, given that so many people were either illiterate or barely able to read, I learned that “Classic Comics” were developed just for people like that — perhaps mostly for boys since I don’t think I ever saw a girl reading one.  Classic comics were cultural hooks disguised as adventurous comic books.  We read those stories without realizing we were learning about critical Western values: Fear of God, fearless service, defense of the weak, offering aid to widows and orphans, refraining from giving offense, living for honor and glory, protecting your friends, speaking only truth, and respecting, and honoring women.

    Again, looking back in time, the classic comics were similar to the Warner Brothers cartoons we used to see at the Saturday afternoon movie matinees.  Despite the mayhem with Daffy Duck or Elmer Fudd, we always had exposure to classical music in the background.  Most of us never realized we listened to Mozart, Werner, Strauss, Smetana, Chopin, and many others.  Later in life, we may have developed an appreciation for those composers.

    Finally, when still in the classroom, we teachers would discuss the “values disconnect” between Hispanic children and the white population.  I suggested that if my co-workers wanted to understand it, they first must realize that, as a rule, Hispanic children do not read.  If these children did read, it mostly involved “barrio stories,” with nothing at all to do with Sir Galahad, Ivanhoe, or King Arthur.  So, these youngsters weren’t being raised in the cradle of Anglo civilization; they had their unique system for learning right and wrong — and I will say, after much consideration, Hispanic communities raise their children so that when they become adults, they are most suitable for living in the cradle of Latin society.  If we ever wanted to know the genesis of American society’s disconnect – that’s it.

    Well, that’s my opinion, anyway.  I enjoyed your story, Phil. Thank you for posting it and helping to keep my memories alive.        

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    1. You are quite welcome, Mustang, and thanks for reading them. My daughter-in-law is Hispanic, born in Texas, her parents are native Texans also, and I see what you wrote about, their culture. My grandson is 12 and is a prodigy in math and English, and history, and we can’t figure out where that came from.

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  6. I’m getting Mark Twain’s complete series in audio books…I want the real books as well.

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    1. Half Price Books has all of his works, as do I, but no audios. I might look into that one, something to relax by while sitting in my lounge chair with a nice Irish whisky.

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      1. I do a lot of audios because of my 45 minute one way drive to and from work everyday….but I never listen at home…it’s expensive but I love to have both when possible….the whiskey sounds good.

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