LONGVIEW, Texas — I've been reading "The River of Doubt," a nonfiction account of Theodore Roosevelt's harrowing 18-month South American expedition down a tributary of the Amazon that had never been explored. Originally dubbed Rio da Duvida, or River of Doubt, eventually the river was named for the former president who nearly died exploring it.
Teddy Roosevelt at the time was 55. The previous year he had lost an attempt to gain a third berth in the White House under the Bull Moose Party label. He outpolled William Howard Taft, the Republican incumbent who had succeeded him, but in doing so paved the way for Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win. So Roosevelt was at loose ends and looking for adventure, his usual pattern of escape after tragedy or disappointment struck.
Boy, did he find it. "The River of Doubt" is a new release from Candice Miller, a former National Geographic writer. It's a page-turner. A day after picking it up I was on page 197. There, Miller describes Roosevelt's famous near-sightedness, which made this intrepid hunter a mediocre marksman who missed his prey often as not. Finally, his father figured out his son was terribly myopic and bought him his first set of eyeglasses. I can't imagine Teddy Roosevelt wearing anything other than wire-rimmed specs, but the author doesn't provide that detail.
But she recalls what he said when he first put on those glasses, and the world came into focus: Those glasses, he wrote, "literally opened an entirely new world to me. I had no idea how beautiful the world was until I got those spectacles."
Forty-five years ago this month, I experienced that same feeling of clarity. I was an eight-year-old third grader. My teacher figured out I couldn't see the blackboard unless I sat in the front row. She advised my parents to take me to an optometrist.
I sat in an imposing medical chair, my legs not long enough to even bend down over the curve of the seat. I could hardly find the eye chart on the opposing wall, let alone read all but the largest black "E" at top, maybe a row or two lower. He went through the routine while flipping lenses in front of my eyes, one by one. "Is this sharper? Or this one?" This was a test I was intent on passing.
Getting eyeglasses in 1963 took a while, like most anything of substance. About a month later, my mother announced my glasses were ready. They were brown-plastic horn-rims, likely the least expensive on the racks. My parents were frugal by necessity. The optician put the specs on my tiny nose, made minor adjustments, pronounced me ready to see the real world.
It was late September in Concord, N.H., the picturesque city in which I was born and still cherish visiting. The leaves were beginning to turn, since autumn gets a minimum month-long head start on the season here in East Texas. Foliage season in New England is over by mid-to-late October, unless autumn has been unusually mild. Here, where the foliage isn't as spectacular but still appreciated, it's more of a near-Thanksgiving event.
I walked outside the optometrist's office, which was in downtown Concord, a few blocks from the golden-gilded Capitol dome. My maternal grandfather ran a Shell station maybe 100 yards away, where I loved to hang out. My godfather owned the town's leading drugstore nearby. I looked upward with my new glasses and became nearly dizzy. The beauty of those leaves turning apple-red, squash-yellow, and burnt orange, took my breath away.
Like Teddy Roosevelt and untold numbers of myopic children before and since, I was amazed to actually see the world's beauty, which heretofore seemed a bit fuzzy. I enjoy wearing glasses. At night, when I'm tired and the world is weighing down, I can put them aside and go to sleep. And the burdens of the world become fuzzy and indistinct.
Then in the morning, I pop those specs back on and rush out the door like Teddy Roosevelt, briskly walking in the pleasant, near-autumn coolness of a post-hurricane September morning. The leaves aren't turning here yet, just falling from the wind.
But the hint of autumn reminds me of when I finally was able to see, back in 1963.
Gary Borders is publisher of the Longview News-Journal. E-mail: gborders AT coxlnj.com