How could I not grow up believing words were magical? How could I not want to be a writer? After a half dozen variations, what I heard was pretty much repetitious, but there always seemed to be some sudden veering–a new line of dialogue, plot twist, or further description–that made each version unique. His imagination, however, unlike his patience, was limited. My grandfather dutifully opened the book. At every opportunity in the following weeks I ambushed my grandfather so I might hear what new events might occur in this cat’s ever-changing life.

It was as if the words on the page had scrambled around and rearranged themselves. His story was different this time, the cat got into more trouble, and out of it less easily. The effectiveness of my grandfather’s performance was verified by my begging him to read The Cat and the Hat again the following Sunday. Not surprisingly, I quickly realized that the story he was reading was very different from the one my mother had read from the same book. What he had done was make up a story to fit the pictures that lay on the pages before us. He had grown up on a farm in the North Carolina mountains where children spent their mornings in fields instead of classrooms. What makes this anecdote so remarkable is that my grandfather could not read or write. Instead, he laid the open book on the table before us, peering over my shoulder as he turned the pages with his work-and-nicotine stained fingers and I heard the story of a talking cat and his high, blue-striped hat.

But when I handed my grandfather the red and blue book and asked him to read to me he did not offer any excuse, not even the most obvious one. It was a warm, summer evening and my grandfather, still dressed in his work clothes, was smoking a Camel cigarette as he lingered at the kitchen table after a hard day’s work. When I was five years old, one of the most remarkable moments of my life occurred: my grandfather read to me.

In the valley by ron rash