Updating...
Along the Back Roads of Yesterday
Nostalgia, 188 pages
From Marcia:
If you know Tom Sawyer…well, then just imagine Tom Sawyer having been born in 1933 and you’ll know my dad!
I grew up hearing stories of little boys out riding their donkeys and mules all day long while getting into mischief. Stories of loving grandparents and the friendly people who lived in rural Colorado during the Great Depression and WWII. And if you’re like me and in love with nostalgia to any degree, you’ll totally enjoy this compilation of some of my dad’s reminiscences. And if you actually lived that life and times yourself, with you, you’ll simply love it. You’ll probably find your mind transported back in time! Just do me a favor and resist the urge to hop on your mule or donkey and ride off in search of monkey business!
~Marcia Lynn McClure
About Marcia’s Dad:
Marcia Lynn McClure’s father, Oris, George lives in Colorado, a little closer to the river than he’d probably like, with a few more birds than he wants to listen to, and more often than not, he would rather be working with mules, donkeys, dogs, or kids.
His memories are peppered with enchanting stories picked up along the back roads through years of yesterday. His unique style of taking readers along the paths of boyhood adventures, days long past, and the gentler times we all wish we could once again experience, brings out the child in each of us. Capers only a young boy, a mule, a donkey, a dog, and friends could endure vanished along with the era of lemonade on the porch and Grandma’s home-baked cookies on Friday afternoon.
The nostalgia that brings these summers back for a lingering glance, a memory, and a flash of experience appears in each of his short stories.
These essays will be published in various forms, including occasional blog posts and on his website. You’ll want to read each and every story to be certain you don’t miss a lesson, an experience, or the grand humor of a boy growing up in a time when birds still chirped, clouds still drifted across clear blue skies, and the only thing that disrupted a young boy’s childhood was nightly chores and Mama calling.
Excerpt:
Mom’s flock of contented Rhode Island Red hens were good layers. They laid large brown eggs. Every Friday night after the barn chores were finished and the supper dishes washed and put away, Mom sorted, candled, and crated the eggs. Come Saturday morning, she harnessed and hitched Sally, her favorite mule, to the Studebaker cart and drove the five miles to Mrs. Cathcart’s. Mrs. Cathcart, our neighbor lady and a friend of Mom’s, had a flock of flighty White Leghorn hens that laid large white eggs. Mom and Mrs. Cathcart took turns taking the eggs to town. That way neither one ‘wasted’ a Saturday every week. The feed store bought eggs from local small farmers and sold them to a distributor which had an outlet for them. The man at the feed store paid cash for Mom’s eggs. He applied Mrs. Cathcart’s egg credit to her feed bill.
Heck! I was almost eight years old and knew for sure-and-certain I could drive a mule to take eggs to Cathcarts’. All summer, I pestered Mom to ask Dad if he thought I was old enough to make the drive alone. I gave up on Mom’s asking and decided to ask him myself.
As I finished the last of my apple pie, Dad lit the kerosene lamp and placed it in the middle of the kitchen table. I looked up at him. “Dad, ain’t I old enough ta take the eggs ta Cathcarts?”
With his calloused right hand, he tossled my hair and said, “I think it’s about time ya took on some additional responsibility ’round here.”
Testimonials:
Those fortunate enough to have grown up in rural America in the middle of the 20th Century can roll themselves up in this book like a warm quilt stitched by your grandmother.
If you weren’t a farm kid in the 1940s and 50s, it is not too late to correct your education, and this is just the book that can do it. Follow Oris George and his contentious friend, Henry, as they journey through life in a world where the chores are as endless as the summers, the odor of fresh baked pies sweetens the air, and a smile from a teenage carhop can lead to serious heart palpitations.
It would be an ideal world if Henry would keep in check his urge to take Oris’ father’s pickup to town without permission. Life would be simpler if Henry hadn’t revealed where they stashed Elmer’s favorite bull, Challenger. Growing up would be more pleasant if Henry didn’t suck up to the grown-ups while laying the consequences of his pranks on the shoulders of his best friend. But simple, pleasant lives would not make for the entertaining world found in the pages of Along the Back Roads of Yesterday.
In Oris’ world the animals talk, the fish are wily and the mules have more personality than some people. Neighbors can be as grumpy as Elmer, or as eccentric as Anna Tidwell, who wants to save old horses and mules from being slaughtered. Roads are dusty, white tee shirts and jeans are required formal attire for a night on the town. Having your parents leave you “in charge” for the weekend while they take a short trip means unlimited freedom.
If this isn’t your world now, by the time you turn the last page it will be. Oris George lived these adventures and brings time to life with dialect, description and colorful phrases that are a part of growing up rural. Along the Back Roads of Yesterday should be required reading for every city slicker. Enjoy.
~Ava Betz, Prowers County Historian
The heart never lies… and other fallacies of youth will come tumbling back to mind as you read these stories by one of the world’s simplest authors. You’ll choke back tears of recognition as you read through the Man at the Side of the Road. You’ll laugh when you read about Red the mule dumping Mule-Apples in the eggs and on Oris’ head. And… You will stare off in wonder at the innocence that has escaped us over the past 75 years of living.
Fireflies dancing in the darkness, bumble bees flitting from flower to flower, and donkeys and mules meandering across the pasture, share no secrets with little boys playing at the treasure of living as want-to-be men full grown. Time does not stand still in the hills as boys attempt to learn the lessons life shared, through the experiences of growing up. Stories that reveal these details of adventures, had in the good days of yore and yesterday, don’t give away the secrets. They simply revel in the joy of living.
~Jan Verhoeff
