Book Review
Growing Up By RUSSELL BAKER
Reviewed by PEGGY BARNETT
Growing Up is a memoir by a Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper columnist. The memoir is a popular genre lately, but not many are as interesting and entertaining as this one by Russell Baker.

His beginnings would not seem to be the sort which could produce a successful author. Born in the mountains of Virginia to a young and impecunious couple, he and his sister Doris were his mother's focus in life. His father died when he was five years old, and the small family left the home and relatives he loved to live with an uncle in Newark, N.J.

His first job, when he was eight years old, was selling magazines. His mother wanted him to "make something" of himself. "The flaw in my character which she had already spotted was lack of 'gumption.' My idea of a perfect afternoon was lying in front of the radio rereading my favorite Big Little Book, Dick Tracy Meets Stooge Villier. My mother despised inactivity."

She spent time and energy trying to inspire activity in Russell, comparing him to his younger sister who "had enough gumption for a dozen people. She positively enjoyed washing dishes, making beds, and cleaning the house."

When they left the mountains and rural living, they left many colorful characters, led by Russell's grandmother (and his mother's sworn enemy), Ida Rebecca. Several of her 12 sons reappeared in their lives later, seldom to his mother's advantage. Baker tells anecdotes about them, but never makes fun of them. He recognized how difficult life was for them, remote from "modern conveniences."

"Around Morrisonville, grave illness was treated mostly with prayer, and early death was commonplace. . . . Since antibiotics lay far in the future, tuberculosis, which we called 'TB' or 'consumption' was almost always fatal. Pneumonia, only slightly less dreaded, took its steady crop for the cemetery each winter."

Although "times were tough," Baker does not dwell on the difficulties, except to turn them into humorous stories. He had the nonunexpected encounters with bullies as a country boy come-to-town, but survived by his wits. Those wits also later enabled him to earn a scholarship to college, and an entry into the journalism world.

Among his unusual family members, a favorite was Uncle Harold. He was married to Aunt Sister (his father's sister) who lived near them after his mother was finally able to move from her brother's home into an apartment of their own. "Uncle Harold was famous for lying." Russell eventually figured out that Harold was not so much lying as creating fiction. "It was his intuitive refusal to spoil a good story by slavish adherence to fact that enchanted me."

Russell Baker tells a mighty good story, too. Growing Up is available at the Mary Willis Library.

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