Growing up in Newsapalooza

 Growing up in Newsapalooza

1951 was a good year for this 6 year old.

We got our first TV, a 16 inch Motorola. A wonderment.

A bigger wonderment was learning to read from Miss Creen at Byrne School in Chicago’s Garfield Ridge.

Best of all was the avalanche of reading material my parents flooded our little Chicago house with every day. There were the dailies. Sun Times for breakfast. After school the Daily News arrived. Both delivered by paper boys (no girls allowed). After dinner, Pop and I would walk about 6 blocks to Kipp’s grocery store for a few staples and the Tribune. Saturday nite was special. We bought all 3 Sunday editions available early and for good measure the Sunday Herald American. The living room floor carpet disappeared under wall to wall news.

Then there were the weekly magazines. First off was the Saturday Evening Post, which oddly never arrived at that time. Norman Rockwell was the first painter to catch my fancy long before my first visit to the Art Institute. He had a pretty good run…323 covers between 1916 and ’63. The Post was the gold standard for stories. But for pics, it was Life. All the joys and horrors of an incomprehensible world staring back at me every week. Last and least was Look, a sort of Post/Life wannabe, but still very interesting. Why we didn’t get Time or US News remains a mystery.

Last up were the monthlies. This was mom’s turf. Redbook, Good Housekeeping, and the Ladies Home Journal give me an early introduction to the other side of the sexual divide. The LHJ column ‘Can This Marriage Be Saved’ was a hoot. But at a young age, I pondered its lessons. May have served me well as a adult. All that newsprint but no Playboy for Pop.

Readers Digest filled out the magazine library with its pithy articles making it the highest circulation mag on the planet.

Seventy-two years on its all digital. I start each day staring at that hypnotic screen to read, yes, the Sun Times and Tribune. Long gone are the Daily News and Herald American (later Chicago’s Today) so I’ve added the NY Times, and for my peace activities, antiwar.com.

But I still miss reading, on my hands and knees, that carpet of Sunday papers on the living room floor every Saturday nite.

All rea