One From The Least And Disappearing Generation A Memoir Of A Depression Era Kid

The Great Depression of the 1930s was a challenging time for most families- especially those in the "Dust Bowl" states such as Oklahoma. This is a true story of a young boy born just three months before the "Crash of 1929", told with reflections on his growing up in Ada, Oklahoma, during the 1930s and 1940s as his and other neighborhood families struggled for survival and then recovered as the nation began to experience the "Happy Days are Here Again!" promised by a new president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The book covers the childhood and youth years- ending with high school graduation when writer recognizes that he has "miles to go before I sleep". Young Oliver "hawked" newspapers in Ada's downtown business area as a seven-year old, moved on to paper routes and other jobs and learned important life skills through family, church, work, Scouting, neighborhood activities, and especially, as he became "the eyes" for a loving, blind grandfather who, despite that handicap, ran a small neighborhood store and taught the young man how to "see with the mind's eye". People and events remembered from childhood days are sometimes part fact and part perception. The people existed and the events occurred. The blending of reality with the thoughts and impressions left in the mind of a young child become the memories of an adult and are shared so that today's generation and future generations will know what life was like in that era. These are reflections on the joys and trials- neighborhood incidents, play, the murder of a neighbor, falling in love- memories of one person from the generation which was the smallest in number of all recent generations and one which is rapidly disappearing.

The Great Depression of the 1930s was a challenging time for most families- especially those in the "Dust Bowl" states such as Oklahoma. This is a true story of a young boy born just three months before the "Crash of 1929", told with reflections on his growing up in Ada, Oklahoma, during the 1930s and 1940s as his and other neighborhood families struggled for survival and then recovered as the nation began to experience the "Happy Days are Here Again!" promised by a new president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The book covers the childhood and youth years- ending with high school graduation when writer recognizes that he has "miles to go before I sleep". Young Oliver "hawked" newspapers in Ada's downtown business area as a seven-year old, moved on to paper routes and other jobs and learned important life skills through family, church, work, Scouting, neighborhood activities, and especially, as he became "the eyes" for a loving, blind grandfather who, despite that handicap, ran a small neighborhood store and taught the young man how to "see with the mind's eye". People and events remembered from childhood days are sometimes part fact and part perception. The people existed and the events occurred. The blending of reality with the thoughts and impressions left in the mind of a young child become the memories of an adult and are shared so that today's generation and future generations will know what life was like in that era. These are reflections on the joys and trials- neighborhood incidents, play, the murder of a neighbor, falling in love- memories of one person from the generation which was the smallest in number of all recent generations and one which is rapidly disappearing.

Stories told in the book, "Tony Dufflebag . . . and other Remembrances of the War in Korea," are a mixture of memories, history, journalism and autobiographical experiences that are blended into a fascinating collection. The title story is of the rescue by two soldiers of a six-year-old Korean orphan boy who was found freezing and starving on the streets in war-ravaged Seoul, South Korea, then secreted into protective “adoption” for a few weeks, and how he was cared for and won the hearts of all the soldiers in a frontline Infantry rifle company until he was placed in safer circumstances. The author shares feelings about the death of a fellow soldier, of thoughts about a young wife and son back home, of the dramatic mountain rescue of a critically-wounded friend, reflects on feelings of a Christian soldier in combat, tells about lifelong friendships that develop in wartime, reflects on personal values, beliefs, feelings, commitments, opinions and relates tales of humorous events that occur to and among soldiers, even in a far-off war zone.

It is the year 4022; all of the ancient country of Usa has been buried under many feet of detritus from a catastrophe that occurred back in 1985. Imagine, then, the excitement that Howard Carson, an amateur archeologist at best, experienced when in crossing the perimeter of an abandoned excavation site he felt the ground give way beneath him and found himself at the bottom of a shaft, which, judging from the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from an archaic doorknob, was clearly the entrance to a still-sealed burial chamber. Carson's incredible discoveries, including the remains of two bodies, one of then on a ceremonial bed facing an altar that appeared to be a means of communicating with the Gods and the other lying in a porcelain sarcophagus in the Inner Chamber, permitted him to piece together the whole fabric of that extraordinary civilization.

Spelman skillfully draws the reader into the elation and sorrow that accompany the discovery of a family's past. A profoundly loving yet honest elegy, Missing is, like the woman it memorializes, complex and beautiful. "--Book jacket.

New York Times Bestseller What J. D. Vance did for Appalachia with Hillbilly Elegy, CNN analyst and one of the youngest state representatives in South Carolina history Bakari Sellers does for the rural South, in this important book that illuminates the lives of America’s forgotten black working-class men and women. Part memoir, part historical and cultural analysis, My Vanishing Country is an eye-opening journey through the South's past, present, and future. Anchored in in Bakari Seller’s hometown of Denmark, South Carolina, Country illuminates the pride and pain that continues to fertilize the soil of one of the poorest states in the nation. He traces his father’s rise to become, friend of Stokely Carmichael and Martin Luther King, a civil rights hero, and member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) , to explore the plight of the South's dwindling rural, black working class—many of whom can trace their ancestry back for seven generations. In his poetic personal history, we are awakened to the crisis affecting the other “Forgotten Men & Women,” who the media seldom acknowledges. For Sellers, these are his family members, neighbors, and friends. He humanizes the struggles that shape their lives: to gain access to healthcare as rural hospitals disappear; to make ends meet as the factories they have relied on shut down and move overseas; to hold on to precious traditions as their towns erode; to forge a path forward without succumbing to despair. My Vanishing Country is also a love letter to fatherhood—to Sellers' father, his lodestar, whose life lessons have shaped him, and to his newborn twins, who he hopes will embrace the Sellers family name and honor its legacy.

After living in San Francisco for fifteen years, journalist Gordon Young found himself yearning for his Rust Belt hometown: Flint, Michigan, the birthplace of General Motors and the “star” of the Michael Moore documentary Roger & Me. Hoping to rediscover and help a place that had once boasted one of the world’s highest per capita income levels but had become one of the country's most impoverished and dangerous cities, he returned to Flint with the intention of buying a house. What he found was a place of stark contrasts and dramatic stories, where an exotic dancer could afford a lavish mansion, speculators scooped up cheap houses by the dozen on eBay, and arson was often the quickest route to neighborhood beautification. Skillfully blending personal memoir, historical inquiry, and interviews with Flint residents, Young constructs a vibrant tale of a once-thriving city still fighting—despite overwhelming odds—to rise from the ashes. He befriends a ragtag collection of urban homesteaders and die-hard locals who refuse to give up as they try to transform Flint into a smaller, greener town that offers lessons for cities all over the world. Hard-hitting, insightful, and often painfully funny, Teardown reminds us that cities are ultimately defined by people, not politics or economics.

I tell of a time, a place, and a way of life long gone. For many years I have had the urge to describe that treasure trove, lest it vanish forever. So, partly in response to the basic human instinct to share feelings and experiences, and partly for the sheer joy and excitement of it all, I report on my early life. It was quite a romp. So begins Mildred Kalish’s story of growing up on her grandparents’ Iowa farm during the depths of the Great Depression. With her father banished from the household for mysterious transgressions, five-year-old Mildred and her family could easily have been overwhelmed by the challenge of simply trying to survive. This, however, is not a tale of suffering. Kalish counts herself among the lucky of that era. She had caring grandparents who possessed—and valiantly tried to impose—all the pioneer virtues of their forebears, teachers who inspired and befriended her, and a barnyard full of animals ready to be tamed and loved. She and her siblings and their cousins from the farm across the way played as hard as they worked, running barefoot through the fields, as free and wild as they dared. Filled with recipes and how-tos for everything from catching and skinning a rabbit to preparing homemade skin and hair beautifiers, apple cream pie, and the world’s best head cheese (start by scrubbing the head of the pig until it is pink and clean), Little Heathens portrays a world of hardship and hard work tempered by simple rewards. There was the unsurpassed flavor of tender new dandelion greens harvested as soon as the snow melted; the taste of crystal clear marble-sized balls of honey robbed from a bumblebee nest; the sweet smell from the body of a lamb sleeping on sun-warmed grass; and the magical quality of oat shocking under the light of a full harvest moon. Little Heathens offers a loving but realistic portrait of a “hearty-handshake Methodist” family that gave its members a remarkable legacy of kinship, kindness, and remembered pleasures. Recounted in a luminous narrative filled with tenderness and humor, Kalish’s memoir of her childhood shows how the right stuff can make even the bleakest of times seem like “quite a romp.”