Reading and music as entertainment

Carl: What did you do for entertainment when you had nothing at home? You read.

Ellen: You had a library you could go to, right?

Carl: About as big as this one row (waves at the small section in Red Robin where we're seated). Yeah, they must have had a children's section with fifty books (laughs). I can remember when they built the big library-- it's still there, right on Court Street. There were bookstores... I didn't have many books, we couldn't afford to buy books very well. I would walk to the library when it opened at nine in the morning, and get the maximum number of books-- I think it was two. It was that big a library (laughs). Read one of them walking home, sit on the front porch and read the other one. You could only go once a day, so I'd wait till the next morning, go down and get my two books, bring them home and read them. Every day, walked three miles back and forth to the library. They were very... limited. The children's books were strictly children's books...  Tom Swift, Don Sturdy... the Boswell Sisters (stops with a sly grin and waits for Ellen to notice he's kidding). No, they were a vocal group.  I'm jiving you.

(The conversation turns to music.)

Carl: Phonographs. You had three minutes, then you turned it (the record) over, played that three minutes... you were used to it, that's what you did.

Ellen: Was that the sort of player with the horn on it? The big horn?

Carl: Yeah, that was before the electric loudspeaker. First one we had was a big old Victor, with a big old tonearm with a great big sound collecting device, like eight pounds on the needle. Everybody had Caruso records, and this Scotch comedian who was very popular... Harry Lauder. And (unable to guess at name). Everyone had those records... you showed off the fact that you were cultured by what you had on your phonograph. Everybody had the same records, because that was what was considered cultured then. Most people never played them, but they had them.