Comparing with Young Abe Lincoln: a grandiose delusion of mine?

Lincoln’s mother died when he was 9-years-old and his step mother, Sarah Bush Johnston, raised him like her own (“She was all of a mother to him [Lincoln].  He was her boy more than any born to her.” She brought three of her own children when she married Thomas Lincoln.) She lived to see her step son became the greatest President in the country, and survived him four years.  Lincoln once said of her, “All I am, and all I hope to be, I owe to my darling mother!”

The most amazing characteristic of his life is the expansion of his mind through the written words, which lifted him out of the Indiana’s wilderness, where “books ain’t as plenty as wildcats in these parts o’ Indianny.” 
Carl Sandburg wrote,

“At age of 7 the young Abe would lie on the dry leaves [his soft bed] at night contemplating what ‘independent’ or ‘predestination’ means. . . . His father talks about the waste of time in ‘eddication’; . . . but the stanch [staunch], yearning stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln, comes between the boy and the father.  And the father listens to the stepmother and lets her have her way. . . . The farm boys talked about how Abe Lincoln was always reading, digging into books, stretching out flat on his stomach in front of the fire place, studying till midnight and past midnight . . .”

Lincoln told Dennis Hank (his cousin), “The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who’ll git me a book I ain’t read.”

My family: June 1956 (lunar calendar) on the birthday of my maternal grandmother

My mother often said she never had to ask me to read the books because I was always reading.  The electric outage was common and routine in the village, Xia-tang (下潭) where I grew up; many times a week and often lasting for hours.  I recall my mother would discourage me reading with a candle light saying it would hurt my eyes.

While attending the Chia-yi Middle School and High School, for a while I lived with my second sister and biked to school and after school I often diverted to the city library or ‘People Service Station’ (民眾服務處, sponsored by KuoMing Party [國民黨], thus a propaganda site) where newspapers and magazines are provided.  I was never happy or satisfied as the books were so limited and scarce; I could hardly find books of poignant interest.  My second sister was my very first teacher (first grade—there was no kindergarten in our village) and she would say if I read I would go places.

Lincoln would read between the plow handles and would be reading while walking, and would stop in the middle of the road from time to time until he got it straight.  During my middle school days (grade 7 to 9) and part of high school years I rode a primitive small train (used to haul the sugar canes as well as passengers) from Po-tzu to Chia-yi where my school locates.  It took the train one hour to travel the distance of about 10-11 miles.  Then all the students walked 30 minutes from the train station to the school in files; we usually formed 3 rows and I always stood in the middle so that I could walk and read all the way to school without worrying being hit by the cars or bikes.

Lincoln’s family moved from Kentucky to Illinois when he was 18 years of age, Carl Sandburg wrote,

“Two of the wagons had two yoke of oxen each and one wagon had four horses.  On the wagons were Tom and Sarah Bush Lincoln [Lincoln’s step mother], her three children, . . . Abraham Lincoln on and off an ox wagon with a goad coaxing or prodding the animals and bawling at them to get along.  They stopped where night found them, cooked supper, slept, and started at daybreak.  What with the ground freezing at night and thawing in the day, the oxen and horses slipped and tugged, the wagon axles groaned, the wooden pegs and cleats squeaked—a journey, Lincoln said later, “slow and tiresome.” . . . After traveling over 200 miles to Macon County, Illinois. . . . ”

We moved from Xia-Tang (下潭) to Po-Tzu (朴子) when I was at my fifth grade and water buffalo was our U-Haul.  I vividly recall that once the water buffalo suddenly stopped and defecated exactly in front of me; then I realized why my sisters gave me the honor of sitting in the middle in charge of the water buffalo.  Lincoln said their journey was “slow and tiresome,” but, ours was “slow but exciting,” as I thought we’re moving into a big city (朴子).

Our ox-vehicle (牛車) is a 4-wheel “medium sized car”, fancier than the photo shown; the water buffalo is essentially the same.

You may have noticed that I used quotes excessively on purpose in my writings; I constantly write down something on a piece of paper, on the notebook or type into computer.  Abe Lincoln apparently also had this habit.  He might even write on the fire shovel by using a piece of charcoal, and later copied into a piece of paper or notebook.

Lincoln was born and raised in a log cabin; the house in which I was born was comparable.  Jo and Sean saw the house in which I grew up until my fifth grade when we moved to the ‘big city’—Po-tzu, 朴子 (We never had a running water inside that house.  I saw a similar water pump in Harvard Yard some years ago; I was an expert using it, even though my left thumb was once half crushed operating it.) 

Jo and Sean also met my playmate and without the benefit of communication with him when we visited Xia-tang (下潭); they marvelled at the skill of chewing and spitting 檳榔; they could appreciate the two sets of mind made all the more difference by readings only. 

Our large family all slept in the bed room—the one and only; I now may call it ‘master bed room.’  The youngest one had the privilege of sleeping next to my mother; when my younger sister was born, I asked to sleep at the feet of my mother near the edge of the bed.  (I do not recall this, but my elder sisters attest to it.)  A wrong turn, I would be on the hard, shinning dirt floor, which impressed and amazed Jo and Sean.  Carl Sandburg also described “the floor was packed-down dirt” in Lincoln's home.

The house in which I was born was in the even smaller village; the mud house was torn down and a new modern-looking house was built in the same site when Jo and Sean visited; they did see the chickens running around in the front yard of the house.  

I was born at the end of WWII, at which time Taiwan was still occupied by Japan, making us in the Axis camp.  Bombing by American airplanes became more often and intense, and that is why my mother retreated to the small village where I was delivered to this world by my father.  The mud house was literally built by the mud mixing with the shells of the rice, and no cement at all.  

Jo and Sean had visited the village and field where my father studied while having his water buffaloes grazing.  He knew the only way could lift him out of the desolate swamp was through education to expand his mind.  It was extremely difficult to enter the only medical school in Taiwan then—the one that became the now prestigious National Taiwan University College of Medicine after the Japanese surrendered at the end of WWII—as the Japanese, being the ‘occupier’, reserved most of the spots for Japanese living in Taiwan .   

My father (photo at his medical school days) managed to enter that medical school through his motivation and determination and Jenny and Jason Lin’s grandfather was his classmate.