One of my favorite stories on Medium, Roy, and made all the more special because it came from someone I would not have expected to write such a story.

My father wasn’t a lovable daddy sort, but I will always be grateful that he instilled and encouraged my loving of reading. We lived in a very rural area with no public library. The only source of books for kids were school libraries, all of which were closed for the summer. Before school ended, Dad let me order a case of Scholastic books to last until school began the day after Labor Day. All the books were then donated to the school library.

For Christmas, he had me pick 20 books I wanted to read that weren’t in the school library and he bought 10 of them as my gifts. Of course, they, too, ended up in the school library.