� our family had every meal together, all seven of us. And often more with friends, a bachelor uncle who visited often, and cousins who lived with us. The dining room table was a place of much conversation and education. Dad sat at one end of the table and had at one side of him a very thick dictionary and on the other side an immense, one volume encyclopedia. As meals progressed, and with children of many ages, the conversations invariably brought out a word or subject unfamiliar to at least one of us. Dad's response would be to hand us one of the books and direct us to, "look it up". We would look up the word or subject and share our findings with the rest of the family. It is one of my many fond memories of growing up. Dad still reads continually, he is never without three or four books going. Remarkable really at 83, considering he is actively attending auctions buying and reselling antiques, growing a huge garden and caring for my step mom. I don't think I have ever stumped him with a word.
I would be disappointed if my reading never took me to a dictionary. �
The year when the teacher let me skip the fourth grade, a serious family situation had me farmed-out to relatives in a "Nawth'n" city for several months � quite an experience for a south-Alabama hick kid from a one-room country school.
All over "our" part of town � on walls, fences, sidewalks � I kept seeing a grafitto that was obviously familiar there but I'd never encountered. I couldn't find it in any dictionary, so at the supper table one night, I asked "What does
'F, U, C, K' mean?" (I didn't spell it � I said it, and not by any means in a whisper.)
I got a panoply of quite dramatic and memorable responses, but no answer.
