I wouldn’t have achieved any success in writing without my grandma and my husband’s encouragement.

The summer I turned 11 I spent two weeks with my grandparents. There were no other kids in the neighborhood. I was afraid I would die of boredom. I missed my friends back in my hometown, missed riding my bike everywhere. I even missed my brother and sister.

One afternoon Grandma was in the kitchen. “When’s Grandpa coming home?” I asked. Maybe he’d take us for a ride out.

“He’s out of town for a meeting and won’t be home till tomorrow.” She opened the door and the heat came out.

“I'm bored,” I said. “There’s nothing to do here.”

“Oh, there’s plenty to do,” she said. “You just have to use your imagination.”

Oh, I had an imagination all right. At night I’d call to Grandma from the guest room, terrified that I heard a noise in the closet or saw a face at the window. “There’s no one here but us,” Grandma would say, rubbing my back until I fell asleep.

It’s too bad that imagination deserted me in the daytime. “I can’t think of anything,” I said.

“How about a little trip?” she asked.

We walked along the brick sidewalks. We crossed the street. I saw the movie theater. My heart began to race. I loved movies! But, no, Grandma walked right past the theater. “Here we are,” she said, stopping in front of a store. “I thought you might like to go to Switzerland.”

“But this is a bookstore,” I said. Had the heat gone to Grandma’s head?

She pushed open the glass door, nodded to the sales clerk and walked to the children’s section. Her fingers danced along the covers of the books until they came to a thick volume bound in brown cloth. She pulled it off the shelf and handed it to me.

“Here you go. It’s one ticket to the snow­covered Alps, Switzerland.”

I looked at the title. “Heidi?” I’d never heard of it. “Is it any good?”

“There’s only one way to find out. It’s about a girl who goes to stay with her grandfather like you!”

I was 28 years old, the age when most young people have their eyes firmly fixed on the promise of success but I was a failure. Six years earlier, fresh from college, I had joined a dramatic producing company, and had been going into small towns and rural communities producing country-style musical comedies. But, in the summer of 1940, the country was in a depression, radio had changed people's tastes, and part-time shows weren't all that big any more. So , jobless and with nothing else in sight, I went back home. Later I got a job as a recreation-room director in my hometown. It paid $50 a month, for which I was grateful, but it sure was a dull job.

I felt so frustrated with my plan to be a dramatic star. Restless and dissatisfied though I was it was nice, in a way, to be back home. I tried to teach some of my town's children music and drama. And when I got a chance, I'd try my luck as a performer myself. I'd dress up as a country girl and tell little stories and jokes that I'd picked up during my years living around country folk. I gave this country girl a name-Minnie Pearl.

One October afternoon I was in the recreation room, waiting for the children when a banker friend, Jim Walker, came in and said, "We're going to have a bankers' meeting here. I understand you've been teaching some children dramatics and dancing and singing. Would you let the children entertain the bankers? "I said, yes. Suddenly, he turned and added, "Oh, by the way, the speaker from Chicago is flying here. If he's late, would you mind doing that Minnie Pearl thing? "I told Jim I'd do it.

That night the children sang and danced to old-time, popular songs when I was backstage. After we finished the performance, Jim came to me. "The speaker's not here yet. You'll have to help us. ""All right, "I told him, "just give me a minute to dress up."

Then I went out in front of the hundred or so men in the audience.

Then I walked off the stage into the audience, and a banker greeted me.