weeks. His invitationsstopped and I was left at home alone while he and Allen were off to God knows where. I presumed they were up to no good, especially after they were caught sniffing fumes from cans of spray paint in the King family’s barn.
Most of my days in the woods were filled with soul-crushing monotony and isolation. I spent countless hours kicking the dirt.
Three summers on Boars Head and I was bored.
“Go outside,” Mom would say without lifting her eyes from the latest Stephen King novel.
To do what?
I pouted on our wooden swing and kept vigil for our mailman. When I saw his ratty Buick stop at the mailbox, I would race to the end of our driveway, hold my breath, and pray there would be something for me. On the best days, my Book-of-the-Month Club package would arrive.
My mother was such an avid reader with so many books that Dad had built her a floor-to-ceiling bookcase spanning the width of our trailer. She passed down her passion to me and signed me up for a monthly book club membership. I cherished each new book as if it were part of Shakespeare’s First Folio. Deciding that jettisoning my books to gather dust after a few readings was wasteful, I devised a plan: I would transform my bedroom into a public library and share my collection with the world, starting with everyone on Boars Head.
After taking a detailed inventory of titles, genres, and the retail value of each book, I asked my father to build me a custom case like the one he did for Mom. Using skills I learned at school serving as the librarian’s assistant, I explained how I wanted it divided into Nonfiction, Fiction, Periodical, and Reference sections. He took careful notes and measurements and made each shelf adifferent size and shape, painted it glossy black, and mounted it to my bedroom wall.
I was a budding entrepreneur, and my library was just one of several ventures under the umbrella company of Kambri Crews Products. Others included an internal post office, a papier-mâché puppet theater, and a personalized stationery store. The common denominator was their heavy reliance on our teletypewriter, or TTY.
Before email, text messaging, and videoconferencing rendered it virtually obsolete, the TTY (also known as a telecommunications device for the Deaf, or TDD) was a deaf person’s lifeline of communication to the outside world. Our machine was a recycled army-green Department of Defense castoff that stood a full four feet high and weighed almost two hundred pounds. When turned on, it sent out a surge of power that made the entire trailer vibrate as if it were a rocket ship preparing for liftoff.
To call deaf family or friends, we dialed the number on a regular telephone, then placed the receiver into a modem device with two rubber suction cups. We typed in a message and the TTY converted the keystrokes into a series of piercing tones transmitted to the TTY on the other end of the line. Basically it was instant messaging, only instead of a digital screen it had a massive spool of computer paper that documented every word of dialogue.
Only one person could key at a time and typing conversations was time consuming. The telephone company charged by the minute for long-distance calls, so universal shorthand evolved. TTYs used only capital letters. So “GA” signaled to the person on the other end of the line that he should now “go ahead” and begin typing. “SK,” short for “Stop Keying,” meant you were ready to end the call.
Since letters were typed on paper in real time, there was no backspacing to correct a typo. Instead mistakes were indicated with
XX
and then correctly typed. I spent hours memorizing the placement of keys and pecking with my index fingers, so I would never have to use
XX
. When the phone rang, I raced to answer it. If my greeting was met with screeching computer sounds, it meant someone deaf was on the other end, usually Mom’s mother or sister Carly calling from Oklahoma. I placed our receiver on
Most of my days in the woods were filled with soul-crushing monotony and isolation. I spent countless hours kicking the dirt.
Three summers on Boars Head and I was bored.
“Go outside,” Mom would say without lifting her eyes from the latest Stephen King novel.
To do what?
I pouted on our wooden swing and kept vigil for our mailman. When I saw his ratty Buick stop at the mailbox, I would race to the end of our driveway, hold my breath, and pray there would be something for me. On the best days, my Book-of-the-Month Club package would arrive.
My mother was such an avid reader with so many books that Dad had built her a floor-to-ceiling bookcase spanning the width of our trailer. She passed down her passion to me and signed me up for a monthly book club membership. I cherished each new book as if it were part of Shakespeare’s First Folio. Deciding that jettisoning my books to gather dust after a few readings was wasteful, I devised a plan: I would transform my bedroom into a public library and share my collection with the world, starting with everyone on Boars Head.
After taking a detailed inventory of titles, genres, and the retail value of each book, I asked my father to build me a custom case like the one he did for Mom. Using skills I learned at school serving as the librarian’s assistant, I explained how I wanted it divided into Nonfiction, Fiction, Periodical, and Reference sections. He took careful notes and measurements and made each shelf adifferent size and shape, painted it glossy black, and mounted it to my bedroom wall.
I was a budding entrepreneur, and my library was just one of several ventures under the umbrella company of Kambri Crews Products. Others included an internal post office, a papier-mâché puppet theater, and a personalized stationery store. The common denominator was their heavy reliance on our teletypewriter, or TTY.
Before email, text messaging, and videoconferencing rendered it virtually obsolete, the TTY (also known as a telecommunications device for the Deaf, or TDD) was a deaf person’s lifeline of communication to the outside world. Our machine was a recycled army-green Department of Defense castoff that stood a full four feet high and weighed almost two hundred pounds. When turned on, it sent out a surge of power that made the entire trailer vibrate as if it were a rocket ship preparing for liftoff.
To call deaf family or friends, we dialed the number on a regular telephone, then placed the receiver into a modem device with two rubber suction cups. We typed in a message and the TTY converted the keystrokes into a series of piercing tones transmitted to the TTY on the other end of the line. Basically it was instant messaging, only instead of a digital screen it had a massive spool of computer paper that documented every word of dialogue.
Only one person could key at a time and typing conversations was time consuming. The telephone company charged by the minute for long-distance calls, so universal shorthand evolved. TTYs used only capital letters. So “GA” signaled to the person on the other end of the line that he should now “go ahead” and begin typing. “SK,” short for “Stop Keying,” meant you were ready to end the call.
Since letters were typed on paper in real time, there was no backspacing to correct a typo. Instead mistakes were indicated with
XX
and then correctly typed. I spent hours memorizing the placement of keys and pecking with my index fingers, so I would never have to use
XX
. When the phone rang, I raced to answer it. If my greeting was met with screeching computer sounds, it meant someone deaf was on the other end, usually Mom’s mother or sister Carly calling from Oklahoma. I placed our receiver on
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