In the larder with the lunkers

By WILLIAM J. FURRY

Robert J. Hastings, A Nickel's Worth of Skimmed Milk: A Boy's View of the Great Depression, Carbondale: SIU Press, 1986, 149 pp., paper, $7.95.

Robert J. Hastings, A Penny's Worth of Minced Ham: Another Look at the Great Depression, Carbondale: SIU Press, 1986, 100pp., paper, $8.95, cloth, $13.95.

Charless Caraway, Foothold on the Hillside: Memories of a Southern Illinoisan, Carbondale, SIU Press, 1986, 101 pp., paper, $9.95, cloth, $16.95.

Art Reid, Fishing Southern Illinois, Carbondale: SIU Press, 1986, 147 pp., paper, $12.95, cloth, $19.95.

In 1972 the graphics department at Southern Illinois University published an attractive, slipcased-volume of childhood memories of the Depression years in Marion, entitled A Nickel's Worth of Skimmed Milk: A Boy's View of the Great Depression. Robert J. Hastings' unashamedly nostalgic memories eventually went through five printings and all 40,000 copies were sold by the late 1970s. This fall, this well-known regional classic was reprinted along with a second title by Hastings as part of a new series by the SIU Press. Called Shawnee Books, the series also includes a farmer's memoir and a fisherman's secrets for landing lunkers in southern Illinois.

Skimmed Milk is a charming book. Hastings captures the moods, the petty visions and heart-felt ambitions of this small town in southern Illinois during the Depression and filters it all for us through the wide-open eyes and ears and the stomach of a growing boy (Hastings turned five the spring before Black Friday). The reprint of Skimmed Milk includes new introductory material and what Hastings calls his "magic photograph," a Hastings family photograph dating back to 1912 of his grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins and one sister. It provides the faces behind the many voices that echo through the pages. Indeed, these voices are one of the unifying features of his sequel to Skimmed Milk. Each chapter of the sequel, A Penny's Worth of Minced Ham: Another Look at the Great Depression, is introduced by a voice from Hastings's childhood. Although Minced Ham is more appendix than sequel to Skimmed Milk, it maintains the nostalgic tone and brings the memories clearly into focus with several Depression-era photographs of neighborhood grocery stores and individual family snapshots. Unfortunately, there are some minor editorial problems in Minced Ham. Hastings' repetitive use of the colloquialism "and the like" in the first 30 pages should have earned this book an additonal subtitle. On one or two occasions, Skimmed Milk and Minced Ham offer contradictory versions of specific events, factual details that could easily have been corrected before publication by an observant editor. Despite its minor faults, Minced Ham is a good read and a useful primer for students beginning their studies of the Depression in Illinois. Hastings walks his readers to all the neighborhood grocery stores, through alleys and side-streets, passing along the way the Illinois Central tracks and the "Hoover Hotel," where transients boil tincan coffee over open fires. In the groceries, Hastings catalogs bulk foods, mining supplies, penny candies, fresh produce and, where possible, gives Depression-scale prices fore each item. Hastings' books are the kind I wish my grandparents had the time to write about their own experiences during the Depression. Fortunately for us all, Robert Hastings succeeds in making his story a universal experience for Illinoisans.

Another book in the series is Foothold on the Hillside: Memories of a Southern Illinoisan. In this book, Charless Caraway, a southern Illinois farmer, recounts his youth and maturation in Eldorado, Makanda, Murphysboro, Etherton Switch and other neighboring communities. The book is splendidly illustrated with archival photographs of southern Illinois community life and personal photographs from the Caraway family collection. Unlike Skimmed Milk and Minced Ham. Foothold is not nostalgic. Progress, expansion, movement and uprootedness permeate this book, and one gets the feeling that Caraway's childhood ironically paralleled the gypsy lifestyle Caraway denigrates in two short chapters on southern Illinois gypsies. In an especially memorable story, Caraway describes a circus family traveling through Saline County in 1894:

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"They held circus shows all winter for the local people. The children would do their song-and-dance act barefoot, and, the only visible clothing they wore was a sort of nightshirt. They ran races barefoot over the frozenground and gathered nuts, wild grapes, papaws, and acorns from the cinquapin oaks in the woods .... One fine day in March, the family loaded what few posessions they had into their one horse wagon and went on their way .... We missed them for a while."

Caraway's father, constantly in search of a subsistence wage, moved his family whenever circumstances demanded, and annual moves were not uncommon.

Caraway's narrative is rich in local lore and color. In a chapter called "Potions and Notions," he lists local herbal remedies for a variety of complaints in addition to the Saline County prescription for healthy teeth and gums, a dentifrice utilizing burnt corncobs. Caraway's book is a pleasant lesson from a well-lived life and a constant reminder of southern Illinois' deeply rooted foothold in the Ozarks.

The final title in the series is Art Reid's Fishing Southern Illinois. Reid is better known as the producer/host of "Outdoors with Art Reid," a highly rated and long-running television program produced at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. In Fishing, Reid looks at several of the better-known fishing spots in southern Illinois (he considers Sangchris Lake, southeast of Springfield, a southern Illinois lake) and some of the not-so-well-known, and gives a report card for each, highlighting fish populations and their various habitats in addition to some valuable behavioral information on individual species. As one would expect, Reid and his fishing cronies land lunkers on nearly every page, but it is precisely these fish stories and the lure and lore of these waters that make this book such a readable and informative guide to fishing southern Illinois.

The whole series is a lure to understanding the culture of southern Illinois.

William J. Furry, a folk musician, is a student of folk literature.

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