"You're Probably from Holden, If...": Growing Up in A Vanishing New England
Walter Donway is a longtime Objectivist and author and fellow Gulcher. I bought his newest last night and wanted to share with you here in the Gulch. He is a wonderful writer. Here was his announcement:
"This is my latest book, and none has been as personal or intimate, as "close to the ground" of my life and the America I knew as a boy.
Both the ebook and paperback versions are available, but I favor the paperback because, with some 40 photos, the reproduction is important, as is the formatting. Perhaps, too, there is something about the subject matter and feeling of this story of boyhood and New England that will make a reader want to hold the real thing. The paperback price is as low as Amazon permits me for this book.
In a sense, this is the book I always knew I would write. Growing up in a small New England town, Holden, near a classic early New England industrial city, Worcester, immediately after WWII, I knew an America of farms and fields, neighborliness, a classic view of education as beginning with rigors of "grammar school," mostly home cooking, and a small-town innocence and isolation--all of which was vanishing, forever. I knew an immediate world of gardens, pigs and chickens, cow ponds, and hand-milked cows; but it also was a world just discovering television, a world pre-sexual revolution, a sometimes rough and bigoted world, but always a world running headlong into change (my dad had pigs at home in Holden and a department store in Worcester).
Some of chapter titles will give you a sense of the story: The Life of a Barn; Just Walking To School; Pleased to Meet You, Death; Aggie; Golompkis by Any Other Name; Who Taught You Art?; My Worcester Tornado; Born to Hang--Two Problem Kids in First Grade; Harry's Dairy; Science: A Story, A Tribute to Holden; Don't Kill My Dog; A Very 1950's Holden Cat; “When You Grow Up, You Work--You Don't Have Fun”; Cognitive Foundations of True Home; Dorothy Hayman Co-Authored My Life; My First Library; Where Did They Hold Halloween?; A Chapter I Wrote on Love; And Now, The World! (Or at Least. Sarasota); Spring Meant Rhubarb, Rhubarb Spring; Have Gun Will Travel—To Holden; and, A Vanishing New England.
I discovered the most enticing, even arousing, way to write this book. I became a member of two Facebook pages, "You're Probably from Holden, If..." and "You're Probably from Worcester, If..." All over America, people are coming together online, sometimes almost every evening, to recall, enjoy, record, correct, amplify, and give infinite detail and color to what it was like to grow up their hometown. I began to post my memories about one boy, one family, one community, and one time in history. The outpouring of responses was thrilling, to me--articulate, specific, impassioned, and, yes, controversial, discursive...
I saw, evening by evening, American history being written by its own people, voluntarily, as an exercise in truth--and love. The food, the teachers, the landscape of the heart, the wars, the tragic lives, the infinite connections of family, marriage, and affection.
As I posted my memories, and these infinitely valuable comments came in, I knew I never could publish a book without including them. And that is what I have done. I have tried to tell, with utter honesty--sometimes embarrassing, sometimes painful, often funny--what it was like to be a boy, then a young man, in this one New England town and nearby city.
I had one additional irreplaceable asset. Between 1930 and 1950, my father had taken literally hundreds of photographs of every aspect of life of the Donways in Holden and Worcester, even as implacable and accelerating change was altering the world he wished to preserve. I have included some 40 photographs out of those carefully preserved albums that tell my story.
Writing this book was on what we call, today, "my bucket list." Much more immediately, getting it published and available by Christmas was a goal because I think that this, for some, will be an inexpensive, lasting gift, which will bring great pleasure--and even start, in someone, the journey that I have taken with so much passion for understanding my patch of ground in America.
Let me know how you like it and let others know with a few sentences on Amazon. May your holidays be all that they used to be..."
"This is my latest book, and none has been as personal or intimate, as "close to the ground" of my life and the America I knew as a boy.
Both the ebook and paperback versions are available, but I favor the paperback because, with some 40 photos, the reproduction is important, as is the formatting. Perhaps, too, there is something about the subject matter and feeling of this story of boyhood and New England that will make a reader want to hold the real thing. The paperback price is as low as Amazon permits me for this book.
In a sense, this is the book I always knew I would write. Growing up in a small New England town, Holden, near a classic early New England industrial city, Worcester, immediately after WWII, I knew an America of farms and fields, neighborliness, a classic view of education as beginning with rigors of "grammar school," mostly home cooking, and a small-town innocence and isolation--all of which was vanishing, forever. I knew an immediate world of gardens, pigs and chickens, cow ponds, and hand-milked cows; but it also was a world just discovering television, a world pre-sexual revolution, a sometimes rough and bigoted world, but always a world running headlong into change (my dad had pigs at home in Holden and a department store in Worcester).
Some of chapter titles will give you a sense of the story: The Life of a Barn; Just Walking To School; Pleased to Meet You, Death; Aggie; Golompkis by Any Other Name; Who Taught You Art?; My Worcester Tornado; Born to Hang--Two Problem Kids in First Grade; Harry's Dairy; Science: A Story, A Tribute to Holden; Don't Kill My Dog; A Very 1950's Holden Cat; “When You Grow Up, You Work--You Don't Have Fun”; Cognitive Foundations of True Home; Dorothy Hayman Co-Authored My Life; My First Library; Where Did They Hold Halloween?; A Chapter I Wrote on Love; And Now, The World! (Or at Least. Sarasota); Spring Meant Rhubarb, Rhubarb Spring; Have Gun Will Travel—To Holden; and, A Vanishing New England.
I discovered the most enticing, even arousing, way to write this book. I became a member of two Facebook pages, "You're Probably from Holden, If..." and "You're Probably from Worcester, If..." All over America, people are coming together online, sometimes almost every evening, to recall, enjoy, record, correct, amplify, and give infinite detail and color to what it was like to grow up their hometown. I began to post my memories about one boy, one family, one community, and one time in history. The outpouring of responses was thrilling, to me--articulate, specific, impassioned, and, yes, controversial, discursive...
I saw, evening by evening, American history being written by its own people, voluntarily, as an exercise in truth--and love. The food, the teachers, the landscape of the heart, the wars, the tragic lives, the infinite connections of family, marriage, and affection.
As I posted my memories, and these infinitely valuable comments came in, I knew I never could publish a book without including them. And that is what I have done. I have tried to tell, with utter honesty--sometimes embarrassing, sometimes painful, often funny--what it was like to be a boy, then a young man, in this one New England town and nearby city.
I had one additional irreplaceable asset. Between 1930 and 1950, my father had taken literally hundreds of photographs of every aspect of life of the Donways in Holden and Worcester, even as implacable and accelerating change was altering the world he wished to preserve. I have included some 40 photographs out of those carefully preserved albums that tell my story.
Writing this book was on what we call, today, "my bucket list." Much more immediately, getting it published and available by Christmas was a goal because I think that this, for some, will be an inexpensive, lasting gift, which will bring great pleasure--and even start, in someone, the journey that I have taken with so much passion for understanding my patch of ground in America.
Let me know how you like it and let others know with a few sentences on Amazon. May your holidays be all that they used to be..."
Do you know wdonway? He is a founding Board of Director from Atlas Society. I'm about 1/3 of the way in. The unique part of the book is the inclusion of comments from a FB pages "You know you're from Worchester if.." You should go check it out. He posted his boyhood stories and then received comments from people who grew up where he lived, including some that knew his family well. I noticed many of those commenting echo what you are saying about Worchester.
I'll check out the page. I've gotten a lot of those lists over the years, mainly in email forwards from my father.