At 5:00 PM +0000 on 11/21/1999, you wrote: > But what about Bananafish? Out in the old > log cabin, or by the camp fire's glow, was Pop > in evidence with his book on his lap? My parents, my entire family, were not readers, but I was insatiable. As in your remark about "most ... fathers," my father was a big reader of instructional material (manuals, get-rich-quick schemes). People didn't read to me. I taught myself to do it. To this day, my family still looks at me as a bookworm (that is a derogatory term in my family), not having an idea about what makes me operate. Even the few educated people in my family (one a relative with several graduate degrees) read inspirational books and tracts of the sort that send me running out of the room with my hair afire. I think our milkman must have been a big reader. --tim