Like many 15-year-old boys in early 1950s rural America, I was caught up in the popular culture of the times. In those heady days before the Internet killed off or reshaped much of print media, magazines were a big part of my life.

The 1952 “Popular Mechanics” I recently uncovered revealed a lot about the culture in which I grew up. The issue marked the magazine’s fiftieth year, and consisted of more than 320 pages of America’s latest inventions and developments in the mechanical arts. Unlike some of its contemporaries, the magazine is still published, although only six times a year, with a lively website.

My issue featured the latest news about the development of “super helicopters” in England, a Floyd Clymer article about the latest foreign cars, a review of the “completely restyled” 1952 Ford, a sleek homebuilt “catamaran” said to be the “fastest boat under canvas,” and many other articles. More than half its pages were filled with ads, including a hefty section of classifieds. In addition to the ads for the latest shop tools, do-it-yourself projects, and car accessories, there was Charles Atlas selling his body-buildng secrets, reaching his likely market: teenage boys.

As a “car nut” I remember liking magazines that previewed the latest automobiles. The Popular Mechanics ad that caught my eye, however, was a small one near the back of the magazine touting the 1952 King Midget, the “world’s lowest-priced passenger car.” The vehicle was developed by two Air Force vets in Ohio using lightweight aircraft technology. Their ad featured a young man giving his girlfriend a ride in the sporty mini-convertible. I was hooked.

During the summer, I earned my King Midget’s $750 purchase price by growing and harvesting a field of soybeans on our family farm. That fall, my car was crated, put on a boxcar and delivered by a train that still ran through a nearby village. Ironically, the day it arrived, I was away from home on a school trip, and Dennis, a friend of mine, unpacked the shipping crate, and my mother drove it to our farm.

A small and very old textbook turned up recently in the back of a bookcase. I thought it might have been something I had acquired from an antique shop, but it turned out to have been the property of my grandmother’s younger brother, William H. Van Horn, whose short life began in 1864 and ended in 1901. (My mother’s name also is in the 1873 book, indicating she probably read it when she was a child in the early 1900s.)

The cover (measuring 5 x 7 inches) is in such poor condition it’s virtually unreadable, and defies any attempt to photograph it. A single strip of clear tape around the spine shows someone tried at some point to keep the covers together, but their worn edges and faded surfaces proved beyond repair.

However, the 48 inside pages are well-preserved and show how many youngsters in the years following the Civil War were taught about their world. The inside cover announces the book’s title, “Monteith’s First Lessons in Geography,” published by A.S. Barnes and Co., New York and Chicago. Searching online, I discovered that an ebook version of my book exists, published by Project Gutenberg, a library of more than 70,000 freely readable ebook titles. Their cover illustration is similar to the actual book, and I’m reproducing it here, acknowledging their generosity.

James Monteith, author of my 1873 book, authored a “series of geographies, maps and globes,” according to the inside cover. Monteith’s book was “on the Plan of Object Teaching, Designed for Beginners.” In his Preface, Monteith declared the book was to present the subject in its simplest form. “It treats of GENERAL FEATURES, such as the locality and description of Continents, Countries, States, Rivers, Mountains (etc), without dwelling prematurely upon details which embarrass the learner in his first effort.”

Like many of his contemporaries, Monteith combined facts with religious zeal: the book’s first illustration shows a crude globe, with the headline, “In the Beginning God Created the Heaven and the Earth.” On a later page, under “Lesson LVIII,” Monteith presents an illustration of turbaned worshippers bowing down to a seated idol, with the words, “This is a picture of a HEATHEN TEMPLE or place of worship. It contains frightful looking objects, before which you see people falling on their knees and faces. Such people are called IDOLATERS, PAGANS, or HEATHENS.” Monteith continues to warn his readers, “You will be surprised to learn that there are millions of idolaters. They live in Asia, Africa, and Islands of the Pacific Ocean.” In a final paragraph, he reassures: “Missionaries have been sent from the United States and Europe to teach those ignorant people about the TRUE GOD who says in his commandments, “THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GODS BUT ME.”

When my grandfather, a struggling grocer in Keokuk, IA, married a young milliner from neighboring Warsaw, IL, in 1880, their lives changed considerably.

No longer would William (called “Willy”) take a small packet boat (the “Ploughboy,” down the Mississippi River to court Mary, his fiancée (called “Molly,”) but the couple would settle in to two decades of marriage, becoming the parents of nine children as they struggled to keep the family grocery going at 12th and High streets in Keokuk.

One of their marriage gifts was a large and imposing Bible, leather-bound, measuring 10 by 12 ½ inches, three inches thick and weighing 10 pounds. In addition to its large print and numerous illustrations, a section between the New and Old Testaments included special pages for families to record marriages, births, and deaths.

The first recorded death was William, born in 1882 and named for his father. He barely survived infancy, succumbing in 1884 to one of many childhood diseases that ravaged families in those days. Births and marriages of their eight surviving children, including my father, would be recorded.

Willy and Molly didn’t get to see their family grow up. Molly died in 1897 of what her doctor called “consumption.” After marrying Lucy Cochran in 1899, Willy died the next year of what his doctor called “nervous prostration.” Their eight children were “farmed out” to relatives, with Lucy taking in the girls. All the siblings eventually were able to attend area colleges.

The Bible was published in 1880 by A.J. Holman in Philadelphia. The date and city persuades me that it was likely given to the couple as a wedding gift by Willy’s father, also named William, who lived in Philadelphia and served as a “missionary” in the German Methodist Church. William supplemented his meager earnings by buying and selling books, including the History of President Grant, published by Mark Twain.