Down Home Missouri When Girls Were Scary and Basketball Was King
- Binding: Hardcover
- Publisher: Univ of Missouri Pr
- Publish date: 11/01/2000
While Vance writes about his relatives and their roots in Missouri and Wisconsin, his focus is on his growing-up years in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The anguish of adolescence is detailed, but lightened with Vance's special skill for humor. Dating, French kissing, drinking, hog castration, and vocational agriculture are just a few of the experiences that Vance recalls. His comical encounters with the local citizenry, his social misadventures, and his fumbling exploits on the high school basketball and baseball teams are interwoven with reflections on weightier matters, such as the mismanagement of the Missouri River and its wetlands by the Corps of Engineers. He shares his emotions, his dreams, and the realities of his high school days, capturing the essence of the experiences of many who lived in the Midwest at mid-century.
Although Vance's writing is funny -- sometimes laugh-out-loud funny -- there are poignant moments, too, when the realities of life and death are immediate and personal. Any reader from a small-town background will identify with Vance's memories, and most city readers will understand Vance's confusion in coping with the move from Chicago to rural Missouri. Taking the reader back to a time when life was simpler and days seemed longer, this lively recollection of coming of age in a small Missouri town will provide hours of enjoyment.
Seller | Condition | Comments | Price |
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HPB-Diamond
Very Good
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$7.18
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Ergodebooks
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Good |
$10.80
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GridFreed
New |
$92.63
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