Nana Biography

And he would go with them on a Friday night. They would go down to Kepler, and he said, “you can buy the books you want, although I have the right to refuse you if you really buy something trashy, and this is to build up your own libraries. “Well the kids loved this. The night when John took them down, they would buy three or four or five paperbacks, what a great idea. They did build good libraries, all three of them have a marvelous set of good books, and he gave books for Christmas and birthdays. I had never really thought of this one I was growing up. I mean, I read a lot, but I was never encouraged to read this way, and I don’t resent it.  When I think of what might have been, if I had had an intellectual family, I wonder how I would have been different. That was no encouragement, and when I went to the university of Kentucky, nobody even asked me what subjects I was taking, I never forgot about that. I came home, and finally I said, “well, maybe I better tell you what I’m studying. “ I gave my mother my list of subjects, and she said, “well “my father kept shaking his head and said, “I don’t know what you can do with physics, what good is that going to do you, and biology, and psychology, and “ Why don’t you take home economics? That was it. That was offered at the University of Kentucky, and I said “OK, I will next quarter. “And so I took home economics, which taught me how to clean a chicken. (both laugh.) Basically that’s all I learned, which nobody ever does now. Nobody ever cleans the chicken, but we had to when we were in Kentucky.

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