Little Heathens - Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm during the Great Depression (Mildred Armstrong Kalish, 2007)

This book had very strong reviews in the Wall Street Journal and nytimes.com. So I gave it a try. And liked it quite a bit.

As the title spells out in detail, the author grew up on an Iowa farm in the 1930s. She became an English professor and certainly has both an excellent memory and a good writing style.

Here in 2007, stories of a kid growing up in the Depression seem to describe a long-lost era. My major take-away from the book was the similarities - not the differences - between the author's world and the world in which I grew up in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It actually only was 30 years prior to my own childhood.

I'm guessing the similarities arise because my world was populated by characters who were adults in the 1930s - my grandparents and their peer group - and another set of characters - my parents etc. - who were shaped by preceding generation. So when this author talks about saving everything - down to pieces of string and bits of foil - I can relate. And when she describes the advice from her elders about never wasting time and the folly of idleness - I can relate. And the gardening stories. And the respect for elders. Also little things like the description of the smell of the green walnuts they harvested.

Of course there have been big changes in mechanization - both in the ag operations and in the farm house. And these have drastically altered the daily routine as described by the author. But much of the underlying attitude persisted.