The Horse in My Garage and Other Stories Read Online Free Page B

characters in my humor pieces. I am happy to report she was immensely proud of the title, and sometimes received letters addressed only to “Troll.”
    At age seven, I taught myself to read. I pulled a third-grade reader off the shelf, climbed up on my bed, opened it to the first story, and told myself, “I’m not leaving this bed until I can read this story perfectly.” I already knew phonics, from having been raised in country schoolrooms practically from the time I was born. I sounded my way through that story a dozen times. Eventually, I perceived that the story was about peanuts, mainly about how they were grown. It was the stupidest story I’ve ever read. The only interesting thing I learned from it was that peanuts are grown under the ground, not on top of it, as I had assumed. But from then on, I knew how to read.
    At supper that evening, I told my mother, “I learned to read today.”
    She said, “That’s nice. Pass the potatoes.”
    When we moved back to our little farm three miles north of Sandpoint, Idaho, I frequented the county library at least once a week. The librarian back then remains one of my heroes. Her name was Mary McKinnon. Mary directed me to all kinds of books over the years, including my days as a graduate student in college. She had put together a wonderful library on the second floor of Sandpoint’s City Hall. For some unknown reason, I became fascinated with the Bobbsey Twins books when I was in third grade. Even now I can recall their names—Flossie and Freddie. (Or maybe Fanny and Fred? My memory isn’t that good anymore.) No doubt Mary tried to direct me to more advanced reading, but I doubt she succeeded until I had read every last one of the Twins series, at least those about Flossie and Freddie. Looking back, I have not the slightest idea what so fascinated me about those two chubby little characters.
    Early on in life, I decided to be an artist. In my mind, painting would give me the greatest degree of freedom. I would paint pictures and sell them, and then be free to do whatever else I wanted. When I reached college age, my high school art teacher told me that the art department at Washington State College was the best around. So I decided to go there, even though it was out of state and my tuition would be much higher than at the University of Idaho. Fortunately, I had made and saved quite a lot of money working for farmers the summer after my high school sophomore year, and construction the summers after my junior and senior years. One of my best jobs was as a high-scaler, where my crew of four hung by ropes over sheer cliffs and cleared them of loose rock. It was dangerous work—but the advantage was that if the foreman wanted to yell at you, he had to come down the side of a cliff on a rope to do it. Then one day a high-scaler on one of the crews got killed, and the superintendent decided that from then on no one under eighteen could work as a high-scaler. I was seventeen, and so lost the best job I’ve ever had. There is a great sense of freedom that comes from dangling over a cliff on a rope.
    The following year, I enrolled at Washington State College as an art major, with the intent of becoming another Norman Rockwell. Alas, the WSC art faculty hated Norman Rockwell and his art, particularly his Saturday Evening Post covers. As a result, I was totally lost in regard to what direction I might pursue in terms of a future career. At the same time, I was not doing well in Freshman Composition. My instructor, one Milton Pederson, was tough! Every week, we comp students had to write a composition. After five or six weeks, I had received nothing but Ds and Fs.
    Then one day, Milt said, “Look for the telling detail,” and it was as if a bomb went off in my head. Suddenly I knew what writing was all about. My grades began to improve. Right away I had a major breakthrough: a D-plus! Then came a C-minus, followed by a whole