Small-Town Echoes

About the Book

Small-Town Echoes contains stories about growing up in a small town in Minnesota. The humorous and often instructive tales present a poignant account of life in the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s.

"Enjoy what you are doing," a fifth-grade teacher said to the author, "because you´ll travel this way just once." Several decades later, he returned to the town. It had tripled in size. Houses were squeezed into areas that had been empty lots, new streets existed, shopping malls and convenience stores lined main streets, and new housing developments replaced what had been farmland.

He was sure that the place where he and his pals spent so many happy hours swimming would still exist. A narrow river flows behind the town´s flour mill and a dam creates a ten-foot pool of water. Here is where they played their games, told their stories, made their plans for the future. When he visited the former swimming hole, he discovered that place had been made into a park. What was there for him to see? The sight of a smooth, barren area divested of all yesterdays and stripped of childhood memories. The sight of an iron fence barring entry to boyhood dreams. The sight of park construction covering the past and leaving the boys of yesterday to live in the dreams of men growing old.

He looked at the water spilling over the dam, and he knew he´d never forget the place. Neither the power of men nor time will damage or erase his memory. His teacher was right. We pass by just once.

After describing his emotional return to his home town, the author delves into his memory to record stories of his growing up. Some of the chapters in the book are tales about the author and his neighborhood pals. They had contests to determine who could whiz over the small woodshed in the author´s back yard. When they were slightly older, they sometimes chose sides and had fights. Instead of fist fights, they often had shouting matches; and the best way to win, they thought, was to call the other guys names - to swear at them. The author´s mother was intolerant of swearing; and perhaps for that reason, he seemed to know more curse words that the others. So he whispered the foul language to the others on his side, and they bellowed them out to the world.

One summer, five of the neighborhood gang built a shack inside an old, seldom used tool shed. To act grownup, they tried smoking in their shack. They lacked tobacco, so they tried smoking dried weeds wrapped in strips of newspapers. The experiment with faux cigarettes wasn´t successful. The hot air they sucked in from the matches burned their mouths.

The guys visited the city dump regularly during that summer to look for treasures for their shack. They hit the jackpot one day. Three never-used punchboards, the kind restaurants and taverns provided in those days, were sitting on top of a pile of trash. A punchboard might have a hundred or more holes filled with tiny bits of rolled-up paper. For a dime or a quarter, the customer could punch the paper from one of the holes. The paper might be blank, meaning the customer lost. Or, it might read "Pocket Watch," meaning the customer won a pocket watch. They rationed the punches-each guy getting a certain number of punches each day. When the author punched out a slip of paper reading $15, he leaped around the shack as happy as if he´d won the New York Lottery.

Some of the stories describe baseball, football, and other outdoor games the boys played. Each year while growing up in Minnesota, the author longed for the end of winter and the beginning of summer-and baseball. Sportswriters now say that professional baseball players are the boys of summer, but they´re not, according to the author. The pro players are millionaires who travel around the country in private jets and play baseball in air-conditioned domes in front of thousands of people. The real boys of summe

About the Author

Herbert Jelley grew up in a small town in Minnesota. After finishing high school in 1946, he served in the occupation forces in Korea. When he returned from Korea, he earned an undergraduate degree at the University of Minnesota and graduate degrees at the University of Cincinnati. He is a professor emeritus at Oklahoma State University and a past president of the American Council on Consumer Interests. During his academic career, he authored three textbooks and numerous articles in professional journals. He and his wife, Donna, have two sons and five grandchildren