Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression | 
 enlarge | Author: Mildred Armstrong Kalish
Publisher: Bantam
Category: Book
List Price: $12.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  78 reviews
Sales Rank: 1105
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
ISBN: 0553384244
Dewey Decimal Number: 977.761033092
EAN: 9780553384246
ASIN: 0553384244
Publication Date: April 29, 2008
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Product Description
I tell of a time, a place, and a way of life long gone. For many years I have had the urge to describe that treasure trove, lest it vanish forever. So, partly in response to the basic human instinct to share feelings and experiences, and partly for the sheer joy and excitement of it all, I report on my early life. It was quite a romp.
So begins Mildred Kalish’s story of growing up on her grandparents’ Iowa farm during the depths of the Great Depression. With her father banished from the household for mysterious transgressions, five-year-old Mildred and her family could easily have been overwhelmed by the challenge of simply trying to survive. This, however, is not a tale of suffering.
Kalish counts herself among the lucky of that era. She had caring grandparents who possessed—and valiantly tried to impose—all the pioneer virtues of their forebears, teachers who inspired and befriended her, and a barnyard full of animals ready to be tamed and loved. She and her siblings and their cousins from the farm across the way played as hard as they worked, running barefoot through the fields, as free and wild as they dared.
Filled with recipes and how-tos for everything from catching and skinning a rabbit to preparing homemade skin and hair beautifiers, apple cream pie, and the world’s best head cheese (start by scrubbing the head of the pig until it is pink and clean), Little Heathens portrays a world of hardship and hard work tempered by simple rewards. There was the unsurpassed flavor of tender new dandelion greens harvested as soon as the snow melted; the taste of crystal clear marble-sized balls of honey robbed from a bumblebee nest; the sweet smell from the body of a lamb sleeping on sun-warmed grass; and the magical quality of oat shocking under the light of a full harvest moon.
Little Heathens offers a loving but realistic portrait of a “hearty-handshake Methodist” family that gave its members a remarkable legacy of kinship, kindness, and remembered pleasures. Recounted in a luminous narrative filled with tenderness and humor, Kalish’s memoir of her childhood shows how the right stuff can make even the bleakest of times seem like “quite a romp.”
From the Hardcover edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 73 more reviews...
 cute stories, okay writing July 22, 2008
i think the book could have gone through one more review period/editing, but for the most part it was full of entertaining stories. i dont want to pick it apart for its redundancies, but sometimes the author got carried away with using certain manners of speech, puns, etc. over and over again. also, there was a random chapter full of recipes that didnt seem to fit in with the rest of the narratives.
i dont know if this book would make my top 10 list for the year, but maybe the new york times looks for qualities that i dont appreciate as much.
 Charm and hard living in Iowa July 20, 2008
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
Mildred Armstrong Kalish describes herself on her excellent website:
"I was born on St. Patrick's Day in 1922, on a farm near Garrison, Iowa, in Benton County. My growing-up was influenced by the Great Depression and by the self-reliance and work ethic of my mother's parents -- themselves descendants of pioneers who never quite made it into the 20th Century. Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression details the remarkable challenges and the inestimable rewards of living a rural life where children were expected to accept responsibilities beyond the ordinary."
She tells her story with grace and charm, describing a number of personalities and memories: a spinster aunt shooting tin cans with her .22, hanging May baskets, and learning to swear in her family of "hearty-handshake Methodists." Example:
"But, Grandpa, even Jesus turned the water into wine at the wedding!" "Well, I know He did! And that's the only thing I ever held against Him!"
Ms. Kalish provides recipes; two I particularly liked (and made with success): Aunt Belle's horehound candy & cough syrup and corn oysters. As a farm boy, her ability to boil a hog's head or remove a wart without making a big deal of it rang true to the girls and women I knew in our Wisconsin farm community. A great example: take a look at the recipe in the first comment and her views on using a straw from a broom to test pie doneness.
I was raised, as Ms. Kalish was, "in an environment where everyone knew everyone else." It endowed her with "a sense of security, a sense of belonging in the world." That feeling also rings totally true to me. I liked Ms. Kalish immensely, and I'm sure you would too.
Robert C. Ross 2008
 Little Iowa Heathens July 15, 2008
I grew up on an Iowa farm in the early 60s so I could relate
to some of the items this author wrote about. Good book.
Wonderful summer read, filled with old time fun.... July 13, 2008
This book was a veryveryvery good summer read. Mildred Armstrong Kalish recounts her years on an Iowa farm, when times were hard and money was scarce. The joy of hard work on a farm. The descriptions of the food for large family dinners makes your mouth water. The work to make the meal is amazing. I could feel the hot summer nights, reminding me of my own childhood. Filled with stories of a large country family that has grown close out of the Depression, this book is filled with cousins, aunts, uncles, grampas and grammas, the rural community is splendidly interwoven.
Wonderful book, fun reading July 11, 2008
I loved this book. The account of life on an Iowa farm in the depression 1930s was both stunning and compelling. It's a way of life unknown to so many people in our country today, yet not far in the past at all. I know only vestiges of it, such as seeing my mother use a wringer washing machine, but mostly from hearing my parents tell about the way they grew up. While reading it, I was torn between wishing I could go back and live in that time and place, and being so very glad I can go to a supermarket and get excellent chicken without having to behead, gut, and singe the feathers off, then cut it all up myself! But the thread running through is the learning of self-sufficiency, pulling together, rising above, the building of good character, all of which is a huge help to one through life's hills and valleys. It's well worth going back to have a look at this way of life and what we've gained and lost.
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