READER appreciates IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE!

READER appreciates IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 14, 2009

REFERENCE:

A person I do not know and have never met but grew up in my hometown IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE has written a warm and moving letter about my book with that title.

The book was written as a snapshot of a time now long past in the middle of the twentieth century in the middle of the United States and in the middle of this sleepy community, Clinton, Iowa, on the banks of the Mississippi River, where young people grew up around the centrally located courthouse.

Like many other small communities across America, there was no television, no mega sports, no big automobiles, no manicured lawns because the nation was at war and there was rationing and victory gardens instead of lawns.

There was radio, movies, high school sports, in the case of Clinton, there was the Industrial Baseball League, where men too young or too old to go to war played for the fun of it. People drove old jalopies, took the bus, or rode their bicycles to work.

It was a time when the four faces of the magnificent Clinton County Courthouse clock chimed on the half hour throwing a metaphorical shadow over young people’s lives. This made certain that they would have no excuse for being late for meals prepared from victory garden staples by their mothers.

This community wasn’t the exception but the rule in that most stay-at-home mothers were homemakers in two-parent families. Few parents in this neighborhood managed to get beyond grammar school, and nearly all of the men worked in Clinton factories or the gigantic railroad yards, or on the trains from Clinton to Boone, Iowa, as this was a factory-railroad town. Divorce was as foreign as an ancestral language.

It was a time in hot weather that people slept with their families at Riverview Park, left windows open and doors unlocked, bicycles on the side of the house without locking chains. If they had an automobile, it was at the curb with keys in the ignition, knowing neither neighbor nor stranger would disturb their possessions. In winter, schools never closed even when snow banks were four feet high.

Idyllic? Perhaps. Accurate? Probably not. But it is the way it is remembered nearly sixty years later.

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A READER appreciates IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE!

Dear Dr. Fisher:

RE: In the Shadow of the Courthouse

I wanted to write to you and make a few comments on your book, In the Shadow of the Courthouse. I can't begin to tell you how much I have enjoyed reading your reminiscences of growing up in Clinton and, more specifically, "In the shadow of the courthouse."

I was born in 1947 and lived at 220 1st Avenue for the first twenty-one years of my life. My father was the first baby baptized in the "new" St. Patrick's church in 1905 and was a mail carrier for over twenty years on a route that bordered the courthouse area.

When not playing ball, or skating at the Sheriff's office during the winter, I worked for Gordon Goetzle at Gordy's Standard Service across the street from the ball field. The names I remember such as Jakubsen, Cavanaugh, Witt, and many others are all a part of my history, although it came about a few years after yours. I clearly remember Gus Witt skating during the winter at the Sheriff's office and at Kahler's Marina and, as a matter of fact, I have found out that Gus still resides in the area in Camanche.

I was one of the first group of young men admitted to Mt. St. Clare and I'm proud to say that I was one of the fortunate Clinton guys to marry a "Mountie," we've been married 38 years and live in St. Louis.

I still keep in touch with the nuns from Mt. St. Clare and visited with them just recently at the Centicle. Tom McEleney was the best man in my wedding and I maintain contact with numerous other friends, especially with the advent of Facebook.

My real purpose in writing to you was to express my gratitude for your accomplishment in capturing what it was like to grow up in Clinton, no matter the time period, and how, although you may physically leave the city, you never can get it out of your mind.

I enjoyed every page and had great difficulty putting the book down. Incidentally, Howard Judd was my swimming coach for five years in high school, I swam varsity for him and the River Kings when I was a freshman and lifeguard at the pool during the summer working for Mrs. Judd (Elsie) and Howard.

Sincerely,

Steve W. Hoosack
Ballwin, MO

PS: If interested in your own copy of this book, contact www.authorhouse.com.