Carl Hamilton (2) (1914–1991)

1610 In No Time At All, by Carl Hamilton (read 31 Dec 1980) This is a most amazing book, written by a man born in 1914 and who grew up on an Iowa farm. His vignettes are super poignant, to one such as me, and many of the things he talks about bring back similar memories one has not thought about for a long time. He does kind of emphasize the unpleasant things, and makes one realize just how unpleasant lots of things were. But he also does not talk of some things that I would feel would make interesting vignettes: planting, or digging, potatoes, e.g. Also, one notes the differences--they threw manure on piles--we hauled it out. He makes a big thing out of how bad cleaning chicken coops out was; I never thought that was so much worse than other manure cleaning--I decided this was because we had chicken coops of normal size. They only milked two cows, so milking played a lesser role in his life than in ours. The pictures in this book are worth its price alone. One wishes that one had sought to record all these things on film when we were growing up: except one never thought about how different everything would be in fifty years. A really great book.… (meer)

3671. Pure Nostalgia: Memories of Early Iowa, edited by Carl Hamilton (read 28 Dec 2002) I read this mainly because I was so enamored of a book by Carl Hamilton (In No Time At All, which I read 31 Dec 1980). But his presence in this book is minimal. It contains eight accounts of life in Iowa in the past, most pretty direful. For instance, there is a diary-like account of the winter of 1936, which even to me (I was in second grade) stands memorably in my consciousness. This is a good book, telling of interesting things.… (meer)