Tom Corbett, Space Cadet

On Tuesday, Scotty and I emptied out the last of our stuff from my mom's storage unit. What was in there was old - 4 or 5-year-old stuff from my old bedroom at my dad's house, and old books. Half of it all went to Goodwill, half of what remains went in another storage shed, and the rest is books, which I'm going through, getting ready to sell to Half-Price Books and Bookman's.

While I was sorting through the books last night, I found many books from my childhood. Babar and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, joke books and children's craft books. But what I was most excited to find was my great-grandpa's copy of Tom Corbett: Space Cadet.

It's a 1953 copy of the book, which is actually the fourth in the series, entitled The Space Pioneers. It follows Tom and his fellow Space Cadets on their adventures. It features Venus as filled with jungles, asteroids to be settled by enterprising young men from Pluto and Mars, and space pirates. In short, it is the best book in the world.

As I flipped through it, I could remember reading it, at my grandpa's house and at home. I had to be careful because it's old, but books back then were more solid, so it stood up to a ten-year-old tomboy's handling. Thinking back on it, my great-grandpa would have been 25 in 1953. This must have been for my grandmother or my great-uncle Lonnie as children. (Grandpa, is that right?) It's a wonderful book. And it's going to have its own little place of honor in my future home, unless you want it back, Grandpa!