A Lucky American Childhood

As a person that has lived in the Cedar Rapids, Iowa area all my life, I find the books by authors who discuss their childhood in that area especially attractive. Paul Engle grew up when horses were still the primary form of power for transportation and farm work in the Cedar Rapids area. His father was a horseman who worked 12 and 16 hours a day, 365 days a year, which was the typical work life of most men at the time. His mother was a housewife that cooked, cleaned, raised and processed most of their food, sewed and nursed, which was also typical of women at the time. Many times he talks about how rough their hands were from the calluses. Paul and his siblings were put to work as soon as they were able, his hands were rarely idle, selling papers, working in the drugstore and even lighting the Saturday fire for local Jewish families. He often talks about the smells of sweat (both human and horse), manure, liniment, lotions and food. His father came home smelling of horses every day, it was a natural part of their existence. One of the thrills that he describes is when the local butcher was smoking ham, he allowed the children to put their head in the smokehouse and breath in the fumes. Paul considers the subsequent coughing fit to be a small price to pay for the joy. Yet, like nearly everybody that grew up in such an environment, he looks back on his childhood with great fondness, writing about it with reserved yet deep emotion. Despite the fact that his father would yell at the children and give them an open-handed wack on the sit-down when it appeared to be needed, Paul still expresses deep love and respect for his father. Engle's childhood is a time long gone, a time of very hard work with very little monetary rewards. Yet, the character and memories that were generated when he was young are so powerful that he clearly believes that there was little that could possibly have made his early life more formative or happier. Life was hard but never more rewarding than what he experienced and he writes about it with such pride and joy that you cannot help but believe that something fundamental has been lost.