My great-grandmother was a religious woman who was particularly strict about the observance of Sunday. I remember as a child visiting her house on a Sunday and settling down to read my Chick’s Own comic book. She told me, “One should only read the Lord’s book on the Sabbath,” and put my storybook about puppies and kittens in the furnace of the stove. She also admonished my father for having “an idolatrous tie of Catholic persuasion” and my mother for having admitted to planting some beans earlier that morning – “No work should be done on the Lord’s day,” she said, “other than the praise of the Lord Himself.” When I pointed out that she was knitting and this was a form of work, she went almost purple with fury and said that knitting was God’s work, “Why else would He the Creator have provided us with sheep for wool and the sturdy elm from which to fashion needles? Was not the Lamb of God a lamb?” she said.
She died of shock when she saw a television for the first time in 1950.
