AUTHOR’S NOTE -- IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE
I’m told that authors ponder the first line of their novels sometimes for months feeling that it is so critical to their story. I must confess that wasn’t the case with me. When I learned of the death of my best boyhood friend, and neighbor, Bobby Witt, which occurred on August 27, 1990, it jarred me so hard that I immediately wrote down this line:
The first day of my life was when I was eight-years-old and met Bobby Witt.
It would take me another thirteen years to fill in the story and publish this book.
This is a memoir written as a novel but as real to me today as it was those many years ago in that first meeting of my friend.
My purpose here is for the reader to imagine living in the middle of the United States in the middle of the century in the middle of this farm belt community of 33,000 snuggled against the muddy Mississippi River during the Second World War.
For me, life began in a working class neighborhood in Clinton, Iowa where I came of age IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE, while the nation struggled to come of age in the shadow of the atomic bomb.
There was no television, no mega sports, no big automobiles or even manicured lawns. There were radios, movies, and high school sports, the Clinton Industrial Baseball League, where men too young or too old to go to war played for the fun of it.
Clintonians had victory gardens, drove old jalopies, took the bus, or drove to work on their bicycles.
It was a time when the four faces of the magnificent Clinton County Courthouse clock chimed on the half hour. This threw a metaphorical shadow over young people’s lives, and made certain they would be home in time for meals prepared from victory garden staples.
The courthouse neighborhood had mostly stay-at-home mothers in two parent families. Few parents managed to get much beyond grammar school, nearly all worked in Clinton factories or on the railroad. Divorce was as foreign as an ancestral language and crime never seemed to find time to come to mind.
It was a time in hot weather that families often slept in Riverview Park, or left their windows open, doors unlocked, bicycles on the side of the house, and keys in the automobile, if they had an automobile, knowing neither neighbor nor stranger would disturb their possessions. In winter, schools never closed no matter how high the snow banks.
This is a narrative snapshot with real people’s names, places and activities against the backdrop of the courthouse, St. Patrick’s School, Riverview Stadium, downtown Clinton and uptown Lyons, Bluff Boulevard, Hoot Owl, Mount St. Clare College, Mill Creek, Beaver Island and Slough, Joyce Slough, the myriad of churches, schools and hospitals throughout the town, and the U.S. Army’s Schick General Hospital. The war casualties were brought to this place, tended and healed, and often sent back to the front.
There was also the USO, Chicago & North Western Railway, Clinton Foods better known as “the starch plant,” Dupont, and many other industrial workplaces of employment. This was all seem through the impressionistic eyes of eight to thirteen-year-old.
This is not a history of the times, nor is it a novel in the conventional sense, but rather the recollections of a time, place and circumstance through my self-confessed imperfect vision.
Still, this story I suspect will reawaken that sleeping child in the reader, however near or far those halcyon days of youth may be.
Ron McGauvran, a Clinton, Iowa businessman, who grew up during this same period, captures the sentiment:
For Clintonians, In the Shadow of the Courthouse will remind them of many things long forgotten. For others, it will give them a sense of what it was like growing up when their parents and grandparents were young. For everyone, it will reacquaint them with their youth and how they dealt with growing up, the naiveté and fumbling for an understanding of life.
I couldn’t put it better.
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
AUTHOR’S NOTE -- IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE
I’m told that authors ponder the first line of their novels sometimes for months feeling that it is so critical to their story. I must confess that wasn’t the case with me. When I learned of the death of my best boyhood friend, and neighbor, Bobby Witt, which occurred on August 27, 1990, it jarred me so hard that I immediately wrote down this line:
The first day of my life was when I was eight-years-old and met Bobby Witt.
It would take me another thirteen years to fill in the story and publish this book.
This is a memoir written as a novel but as real to me today as it was those many years ago in that first meeting of my friend.
My purpose here is for the reader to imagine living in the middle of the United States in the middle of the century in the middle of this farm belt community of 33,000 snuggled against the muddy Mississippi River during the Second World War.
For me, life began in a working class neighborhood in Clinton, Iowa where I came of age IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE, while the nation struggled to come of age in the shadow of the atomic bomb.
There was no television, no mega sports, no big automobiles or even manicured lawns. There were radios, movies, and high school sports, the Clinton Industrial Baseball League, where men too young or too old to go to war played for the fun of it.
Clintonians had victory gardens, drove old jalopies, took the bus, or drove to work on their bicycles.
It was a time when the four faces of the magnificent Clinton County Courthouse clock chimed on the half hour. This threw a metaphorical shadow over young people’s lives, and made certain they would be home in time for meals prepared from victory garden staples.
The courthouse neighborhood had mostly stay-at-home mothers in two parent families. Few parents managed to get much beyond grammar school, nearly all worked in Clinton factories or on the railroad. Divorce was as foreign as an ancestral language and crime never seemed to find time to come to mind.
It was a time in hot weather that families often slept in Riverview Park, or left their windows open, doors unlocked, bicycles on the side of the house, and keys in the automobile, if they had an automobile, knowing neither neighbor nor stranger would disturb their possessions. In winter, schools never closed no matter how high the snow banks.
This is a narrative snapshot with real people’s names, places and activities against the backdrop of the courthouse, St. Patrick’s School, Riverview Stadium, downtown Clinton and uptown Lyons, Bluff Boulevard, Hoot Owl, Mount St. Clare College, Mill Creek, Beaver Island and Slough, Joyce Slough, the myriad of churches, schools and hospitals throughout the town, and the U.S. Army’s Schick General Hospital. The war casualties were brought to this place, tended and healed, and often sent back to the front.
There was also the USO, Chicago & North Western Railway, Clinton Foods better known as “the starch plant,” Dupont, and many other industrial workplaces of employment. This was all seem through the impressionistic eyes of eight to thirteen-year-old.
To have a sense of the times, kids created their own play, as parents were too tired or too involved in the struggle to make a living to pay them much mind. Clinton youngsters would never know such Darwinian freedom or its concomitant brutality again. If you weren’t chosen to play on a team, you found something else to do. There was no point to complaining or mooning because no one would pay you any attention.
This is not a history of the times, nor is it a novel in the conventional sense, but rather the recollections of a time, place and circumstance through my self-confessed imperfect vision.
Still, this story I suspect will reawaken that sleeping child in the reader, however near or far those halcyon days of youth may be.
Ron McGauvran, a Clinton, Iowa businessman, who grew up during this same period, captures the sentiment:
For Clintonians, In the Shadow of the Courthouse will remind them of many things long forgotten. For others, it will give them a sense of what it was like growing up when their parents and grandparents were young. For everyone, it will reacquaint them with their youth and how they dealt with growing up, the naiveté and fumbling for an understanding of life.
I couldn’t put it better.
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 3, 2012
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