Little Heathens by Mildred Kalish: a non fiction reading response.

This memoir is the story of Mildred's childhood in Iowa during the Great Depression. Mildred's father is gone due to some crime and her mother is shattered. Mildred and her siblings live on her grandparents farm because it is closer to their school. Her grandparents believe in the old ways, from family dinners to being almost self sufficient. Her mother lets her children run wild with their cousins.
For some reason, I've always been fascinated with the past. Sometimes I think that I was born at the wrong time. I would love to live in a world where we spend time with family, we have expressions, old fashioned cooking, and the overall culture of the generations that came before me. I love the country, personally. It's beautiful to experience something different than the city. The country is a place surrounded by nature and family; there's just a general atmosphere of peace. I would like to be in the beautiful past. The future is so different because people don't spend time together anymore.
I can relate to Kalish in my own way. I have family in Montana, which is a fairly rural state. I have lots of family members in Montana as well. My family stayed in my Aunt Sherry's house in the countryside (actually, it's on a Native American reservation). When you go into the living room, you see this huge cast iron oven. It's beautiful. In a closet, there are games from her childhood in their original boxes. Her house is like a train station; everyone who visits stays there. In the evening, we eat outside. This year we set up the badminton net, and my cousins along with my brother and I had tournaments. One time we played rummy royal in the night. On July 4th, us kids lit fireworks (the adults put us in charge of the pyrotechnics).
I think what you gain from this is a feeling of togetherness and a feeling of belonging somewhere. In New York, people are always moving and trying to move ahead in life. In Kalish's childhood and in my personal experiences, people are happy with where they are in life and they intend to make the most of it. I think that's why I love this book. I love the idea of what the world once was and how I can really connect to it. The book transports you to Iowa, but I always think of Montana.
She captured farm life beautifully in her book. It's too bad that not many people will get to see the past, either through a book or through a first hand experience.