Growing up I loved to read. There were always books to explore at home, many of them had been bought for my father when he was a child. Some of them I read over and over. I especially liked the books by Thornton W. Burgess which told of the lives of many colourful animals who lived near “The Smiling Pool” and were forever teased and tested by Old Mother West Wind. Old “Grandfather Frog,” sitting on his lily pad, often told tales that explained the origin or the nature of things. Before beginning his stories he would smooth his yellow waistcoat and say “Chugarum!”

It also seemed that there were always a few magazines kicking around that were intended just for boys. My family didn’t subscribe to them, but they found their way into our home somehow; others were on the tables in the paediatrician’s waiting room. The one I remember best was called Boys Life. It was a publication of the Boy Scouts of America, which didn’t mean much to me. But I enjoyed reading it for some of the stories, for the comics, and especially for the advertising—which is what I recall best about it. I also had an aunt who lived in Boston, and at the corner pharmacy on her block there were racks of many comic books. Whenever I’d visit she’d give me a dime or two so I could buy one or two comic books, and over time these came to comprise a small library in her apartment. They had similar advertisements to what I’d seen in Boys Life, and I’d re-read them whenever I visited.

In fact, looking back, it is a bit difficult to differentiate some of the articles from the advertising. I had an interest in shortwave and amateur radio which was stoked by the frequent articles that made it sound exotic and interesting. I also spent time looking at the radio equipment that was advertised, brands with intriguing names like “Hallicrafters,” dreaming of one day actually owning such a thing.

Other products and services that were advertised made a big impression, too—a testimony, I suppose, to the ability of advertising to imprint upon the minds of children.