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We were so poor as kids. I didn't even see a bathtub, running water, hot water, commode - we didn't have any of that. We started with a humble log house, milk cow, garden-raised our own food, killed a hog every year in the fall, and had the meat hanging up in the smokehouse - that was our childhood, me and ol' Si.

There was an undercurrent of poverty throughout my childhood. We lived with my grandmother in her two-bedroom flat, and I slept with my parents. We had cheap holidays, I had to save for my bike and get a paper round as soon as I was old enough.

In my early days in school, I had no shoes, no school bags. There were days I had only one meal... I walked miles and crossed rivers to school every day. Didn't have power, didn't have generators, studied with lanterns, but I never despaired.

I had a really happy childhood - my siblings were great, my mother was very fanciful, and I loved to read. But there was always financial strife.

We weren't dirt poor, but there was no spare money kicking around. While it was very much understood that the way to a better life was through education, books were a luxury we couldn't afford. But when I was six, we actually moved opposite the central library, and that became my home from home.

My parents were born in 1912; they graduated from college into the Depression. They kept notebooks of every nickel they spent, and these habits of frugality from having grown up so poor never left them.

The first thing I remember when I moved to a school in the suburbs was, 'My gosh, all these books!' The classroom and school had a library; I'd never seen so many books in my life! It was something we didn't have in the township.

At home, growing up, we weren't really poor. We had everything we needed, we just didn't have what we wanted.

I grew up in rural Oregon in a log house with bark left on inside and out. We had no electricity, a massive stone fireplace, a grand piano, and tons of books.