Photo: A stack of 1964 Reader’s Digests, a trip back in time. Courtesy of Brenda Bancroft.
By Tom Poland, A Southern Writer
TomPoland.net
I read my mother’s Reader’s Digests from cover to cover. It’s hard find one today, but if you do, it will take you back to another era. And it just might shock you.
Back in 1964 Reader’s Digest suited me fine. Features included “How To Say It In Writing,” Picturesque Speech,” “Quotable Quotes,” a book section, and my favorite, “It Pays To Increase Your Word Power.” Here’s a sample from the April 1964 quiz. Define: penurious … prolix … and puerile. (Answers below.)
In the 1960s the Digest covered things that interest me today, back roads and nature . . . stories like “Farewell to the Small Farm” . . . “The King of Beasts Makes His Last Stand.”
Looking through several issues I see ample advice to wives, not women — wives. Everybody was married it seemed or should be. “What Wives Don’t Know About Sex,” a failed attempt at humor. Some stories came across as sexist with “advice” for married women, how to be a good wife in the night to head off divorce. Some were tongue in cheek. Some features were insensitive such as “Abortion, the Deadly Favor.” I don’t remember any of that. I clearly recall regular features in the Press Section — Humor in Uniform, Laughter, The Best Medicine, and Life in These United States.
The digest reflected the times and it was often a low-brow read, prompting a professor to tell me “I don’t read Reader’s Disgust.” I read it, and in reading its many features, one predicted a stop in my writing journey. The February 1964 issue’s “Most Successful Swamp in America” told how Dick Pope Sr. turned Cypress Gardens into a water ski kingdom and a multimillion-dollar tourist attraction. Thirty-two years later I would write the 60th anniversary feature of Cypress Gardens for a national magazine, Ski Boat.
The opening managed to be insensitive while slamming wetlands. “In the past 25 years he (Pope) has done more for the well-filled bathing suit than the built-in bra; he has converted a fetid swamp in central Florida into a shrine for tourists, left the impression that if he did not conceive water-skiing he at least gave it legitimacy; and he has provided a constant and buoyant irritant for his bitter rival, the state of California.”
Pope’s Cypress Gardens is considered the first theme park, “fetid swamp” and all.
Sometimes the front cover was the table of contents, sometimes art akin to a Norman Rockwell painting. “Articles of lasting interest” covered hoodlums, fraudulent elections, nuclear energy, the ills of smoking, child molestation, war, urban rot, divorce, and more. “Take the handcuffs off Our Police.” bemoaned how an over-zealous concern for criminals’ rights was preventing law enforcement officials from doing their job effectively. Some espouse the opposite view today. They want no police at all.
“Will We Pay Off Our Stupendous National Debt?” Sound familiar? Here’s another once-familiar refrain, “Needed in Viet Nam: The Will to win.”
Again, as a boy none of these features caught my eye. I best recall “My Most Unforgettable Character,” nature stories, and vocabulary quizzes. Reader’s Digest provided an escape and a test of knowledge.
If you get your hands on a Digest, check out the ads. See spokesmen like Arthur Godfrey. Ads for SPAM are as close to the internet as you’ll get. See SEGO, the magical meal that helps you slim down.
I enjoyed going through the old digests, but it made me realize something. A 15-year-old boy in rural Georgia was not worldly. I just didn’t get life at all back then, but I could do pretty good as vocabulary goes. By the way, Reader’s Digest is still with us. Find it online. $10 will get you a year’s subscription.
(Penurious is to be stingy. Prolix is to be verbose. Puerile is to be childish.)
