Stories of a Small Town Farm Boy takes author Eric Duling’s 1960s childhood on a big-family farm and brings it to life starting with the story of an anxious child trying to acclimate into the first grade when all he’s ever known has been farm life. His stories encompass grade school through graduate school as well as a teaching career and early retirement. Duling wrote Stories of a Small Town Farm Boy because when he left the rural life weighing two very different career paths—engineering professor and singer/songwriter—he realized that not only could he communicate, and communicate well with others, but that they liked his stories. They heard in his stories their own. And so, with this book of humerous yet poignant stories, Duling hopes to continue to entertain you, make you laugh, and yes, connect.
Homosexuality is often seen as a purely urban experience, far removed from rural and small-town life. Farm Boys undermines that cliche by telling the stories of more than three dozen gay men, ranging in age from 24 to 84, who grew up in farm families in the midwestern United States. Whether painful, funny, or matter-of-fact, these plain-spoken accounts will move and educate any reader, gay or not, from farm or city. “When I was fifteen, the milkman who came to get our milk was beautiful. This is when I was really getting horny to do something with another guy. I waited every day for him to come. I couldn’t even talk to him, couldn’t think of anything to say. I just stood there, watching him, wondering if he knew why.”—Henry Bauer, Minnesota “When I go back home, I feel a real connection with the land—a tremendous feeling, spiritual in a way. It makes me want to go out into a field and take my shoes off and put my feet right on the dirt, establish a real physical connection with that place. I get homesick a lot, but I don’t know if I could ever go back there and live. It’s not the kind of place that would welcome me if I lived openly, the way that I would like to live. I would be shunned.”—Martin Scherz, Nebraska “If there is a checklist to see if your kid is queer, I must have hit every one of them—all sorts of big warning signs. I was always interested in a lot of the traditional queen things—clothes, cooking, academics, music, theater. A farm boy listening to show tunes? My parents must have seen it coming.”—Joe Shulka, Wisconsin “My favorite show when I was growing up was ‘The Waltons’. The show’s values comforted me, and I identified with John-Boy, the sensitive son who wanted to be a writer. He belonged there on the mountain with his family, yet he sensed that he was different and that he was often misunderstood. Sometimes I still feel like a misfit, even with gay people.”—Connie Sanders, Illinois “Agriculture is my life. I like working with farm people, although they don’t really understand me. When I retire I want the word to get out [that I’m gay] to the people I’ve worked with—the dairy producers, the veterinarians, the feed salesmen, the guys at the co-ops. They’re going to be shocked, but their eyes are going to be opened.”—James Heckman, Indiana
"This is the true life story of a boy growing up to manhood on an Illinois farm ... told in remarkably evocative photographs and in the words of the boy and his family ... the Hammers ... Lieberman decided to make a photographic record of Bill Junior as he grew up, married, and had a son of his own ... Then, when the story was complete, he sat down with the Hammers and taped their reflections as they looked back over twenty years and ahead to the future ... 240 illustrations"--Dust jacket.
Stories of a Small Town Farm Boy is a collection of humorous anecdotes illustrating some of the problems, solutions, and issues encountered by a boy growing up in a small town farming community. The isolation of growing up out in the country provided its own set of challenges for many young school kids of this locality. Even getting acclimated to the new routine of first grade proved to be a feat, but certain new cultural forces were at work to offer alternate areas of interest and entertainment. Television and radio were both still young but made a significant impact at a time when a transistor radio could be brought along, and music could be enjoyed while pulling weeds out in the fields. Growing up with parents who had both lived through the depression added a dimension of frugality which most young people today could never imagine. Many friends and neighbors of my parents’ generation actually grew up in German speaking households but were expected to attend public school where all lessons were presented in English. This book is designed to humorously present a number of significant cultural changes that have taken place in our society. Growing up with little money and a lot of responsibility made for a childhood which was diametrically opposed to current expectations. Much of what we dreamed about then is taken for granted today. Cultural changes are illustrated from the first grade through graduate school, a teaching career and retirement. Enjoy the trip.
When Cal finally gets a chance with Kate, the girl he’s loved since grade school, their easy friendship quickly blossoms into a meaningful romance. But the WWII draft calls him to the war in the Pacific, and with his small chance of return, Cal prepares to part from Kate for good. Inspired by a true story, By the Stars shows that love, faith, and perseverance can overcome any obstacle.
If you can't make it to one of Bruce Block's legendary visual storytelling seminars, then you need his book! Now in full color for the first time, this best-seller offers a clear view of the relationship between the story/script structure and the visual structure of a film, video, animated piece, or video game. You'll learn how to structure your visuals as carefully as a writer structures a story or a composer structures music. Understanding visual structure allows you to communicate moods and emotions, and most importantly, reveals the critical relationship between story structure and visual structure. The concepts in this book will benefit writers, directors, photographers, production designers, art directors, and editors who are always confronted by the same visual problems that have faced every picture maker in the past, present, and future.
Before Lanford Wilson became a Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright, with such celebrated productions as The Hot l Baltimore, Fifth of July, Talley’s Folly, and Burn This, he wrote dozens of short stories and poems, many of which take place in the 1950s, small-town Missouri where he grew up. This selection of Wilson’s early work, written between 1955 and 1967 when he was between the ages of 18 and 30, provides a rare look at a young writer developing his style. The stories explore many of the themes Wilson later took up in the theater, such as sexual identity and the rupture of societies and families. These never-before-published works—part of the manuscript collection donated by Wilson to the University of Missouri—shed light on the roots of some of America’s best-loved plays and are accomplished and evocative works in their own right.
After decades of opposition, the Latter-day Saints have dedicated the Salt Lake Temple, a mighty symbol of their industry and faith. Now, with a new century on the horizon, the Saints are optimistic about the future and ready to spread the Savior’s message of peace across the globe. But the world is rapidly changing. Advances in transportation and communication allow people and information to cross vast distances in record time. And young people are venturing far from home as never before, seeking educational and professional opportunities their parents and grandparents could hardly imagine. As the Church begins to take root in Europe, South America, and Asia, the Saints rejoice in the rise of the global Church. Yet many are wary of the challenges the changing world poses to the cause of Zion. While the promise of the new century is bright, it comes with dire economic hardships, brutal global wars, and other unprecedented trials. Boldly, Nobly, and Independent is the third book in Saints, a new, four-volume narrative history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Fast-paced, meticulously researched, and written under the direction of the First Presidency, Saints recounts true stories of Latter-day Saints across the globe and answers the Lord’s call to write a history “for the good of the Church, and for the rising generations” (Doctrine and Covenants 69:8).
In this semi-biographical work, R. D. McCord uses fifty-two loosely connected stories that document leaving a 1957 Northeast Alabama sharecropper farm for duty with the US Naval Security Group on the island of Oahu. The coming-of-age vignettes center on Hawaii’s last year as a territory and first as a state. Passing through the pages is a hodgepodge of twenty-odd characters that manned Bravo watch at radio station Wahiawa. For the better part of four years, the young sailors brought humor, camaraderie, romance, and adventure to the island, making the Navy and Hawaii a better place. The publication coincides closely with the sixty-second statehood anniversary of the paradisiacal islands. 96
