That said...you'll have to admit, such stuff sounds a little improbable...almost as much as Amy Carter being worried about "nuclear non-proliferation."
Of course it might sound improbable.
But one has to consider the background; I’ve written about this much. I grew up in a highly literary household. We never even had television.
Big family, really big house, the great big wide open outdoors of Nebraska—for what did one need a television?
I really have no idea why we didn’t have a television, and anyone who would know is gone from this time and place.
On the other hand, the family subscribed to five daily newspapers, three semi-weekly newspapers, and too many weekly and monthly magazines to remember. Our mailbox was rarely used, the mailman having to dump everything into a wooden crate on the porch.
Add to that that the house was full of books; built-in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in the hallways, even.
I dunno how the older siblings were handled when children—my younger brother and I were late arrivals—but I myself used to get slews of children’s magazines, as did my younger brother.
I dunno how many forests were decimated; the carnage of paper was surely great.
I assume many of my contemporaries were, at the age of 8 or 9 years, aware of Walter Cronkite. Maybe they didn’t watch him, but they knew who he was.
Ditto for myself with Henry R. Luce.
And Henry R. Luce was more of a newsman than Walter Cronkite ever was; I got the best of the deal.
Too, there was the individual matter of my being deaf; less diversions, less distractions, from reading.