I’m not sure what fundraisers try to sell to grade school kids today, but when I was a kid, it was books. The school would hand out a pamphlet to each kid with a wide selection of books we could buy. Cheap.

Maybe these were books that didn’t sell somewhere else, or maybe they were just reprints of books that had sold before, but the other kids and I bought them. Lots of them.

They all were appealing to young people. Books ...

Transistor radios were a breakthrough in entertainment. Especially for young people. When they debuted in the 1950’s, they were expensive, but they condensed the ability to hear radio stations from across the country into a small device that ran on batteries. Transistor radios easily fit into someone’s pocket, purse, or under their pillow. This allowed listening late at night when we were supposed to be asleep.

My first transistor radio was a Sony that my grandparents gave me. I still have ...

When I was about 10, I wrote a letter to my aunt, who lived in Oklahoma. I’d never written a letter to anyone before.

For a kid in Ashdown, Arkansas, Oklahoma might as well have been China.

I just knew that I didn’t see her or my uncle much, and I told my grandmother I missed them. She suggested I write them a letter. So I did.

That is, I wrote a letter after my grandmother got out her good stationery, envelopes, and ...