Monticello at Mid-Century: A Midwestern Boyhood

A memoir of the author's school days in a Midwestern small town, this highly readable book tells more than a personal story. Through recollections and loving, if frank and sometimes humorous, portraits of family members and old friends, it leads the reader through a number of changes in American ways, highlighting differences in culture, technology, and traditions between mid-twentieth-century American life and life as Americans experience it in the 2020s. In rural settings, the shift is readily epitomized by the move from horses to tractors or from household phones on party lines to cell phones in the hands of every family member. A few pleasant traditions like open-air bandstands are shown to have disappeared, but so have annoyances like horse flies and gear shifts. On a very timeless note, however, the book ends with a special story of recognizable Thanksgiving celebrations among his father's family, titled "A Prairie Thanksgiving."Titles of the previous eleven chapters lay out Gregory Barnes's intent, beginning with "East Central Illinois," an overview of the region also known as the Lincoln country. The titles of subsequent chapters reveal the content of this memoir of a boy's life: it's also celebration of a time and place, a tribute to family, good friends, and good citizens, and a humorous rendition of human foibles. The titles areTraditional Farming Life: Grandpa and Grandma GregoryEarly Impressions of MonticelloCountry Living (reflecting the family's 3-year stay in a farmhouse south of town)Townsfolk Again Boys at Mid-CenturyOld-time Religion I: Church-goingReligion II: SportsReligion III: Work(ing)School DaysAnd finally (Chapter 11): Conclusion: A Few Sweeping (but not Hasty) Generalizations, in which Barnes provides an amateur anthropological analysis of his hometown.