Life on the wrong side of the tracks in a rural town, actually too small to any longer have tracks after the lumbering industry folded, is the focus. The author's family of ten lived in a one-bedroom house and had to harvest nature's bounty in the surrounding woods and lakes to supplement their meager food supply during the Great Depression. Daily struggles in a house with no water, electricity or central heat describe the times. Conversations between kids with questions about sex, religion and love help relate the story. Work in orchards and fields of near-by farms gave opportunities for kids between the ages of 4 and 16 to earn money to buy school clothes so they could look like other kids. They worked at picking up potatoes in weather so cold that they had to take off their socks and wear them on their hands. Mother's death at the age of 32 left Dad with eight kids between the ages of one and thirteen. Dad kept the family together, but ultimately remarried. The step-mother was one who would make Snow White's step-mother seem like Mary Poppins. The text shows how FDR's economic policies and the industrial boom that accompanied World War II made possible an escape from the grip of poverty. The years 1934-1947 are accented. Those represent the years of the author's schooling in the village's single school building. Early, the family accepted welfare food rather than go hungry, and foraged through the town dump for toys and other salvageable materials. Yet, this is not a tale of despair or pain. The book tells of an older sister whose love of learning pushed her younger brother to learn to read and write before he started kindergarten. It tells of caring and loving parents who, prior to Mom's death, filled the house with songs and laughter. Mainly, the book is filled with humorous episodes relating the sweet/sour experiences of growing up poor but loved-of an unneeded tonsillectomy because Dad got a deal on three; of a two-year-old battling a rattlesnake with a club; of a rat chasing a naked big sister from her washtub; of trying to remain clean while milking cows before going to school; of playing basketball in a gym with a stove just off the playing surface; and of clerking in a grocery store where some of the town characters attempted to escape paying a penny increase in the price of chewing tobacco. The story concludes when the author graduates from high school with his fifteen classmates and is released into the world of adults to travel beyond the watchful eyes of the village elders.
About the Author: The author spent his youth in the small West Michigan town of Pentwater. After graduating from high school he worked as a factory laborer, a meat cutter and a core maker in a foundry before deciding on education as a career. He attended college while working full-time as a meat cutter. His earliest teaching position was in a one-room rural school where he was the sole teacher, K-8. During his nearly six decades of teaching he taught in England and China as well as in the USA. He is a Professor Emeritus from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. His publications include many books and articles on education. His most recent publication, 2010, is STUMP HOWIE: Sports Trivia Quiz Book from Aaron to Zaharias.