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(More customer reviews)Anyone with a rural, small town, or farming community background will feel immediate empathy with the stories that unfold as Joe White recounts growing up in a small, Tenneesee farming community. It's a fading life today, replaced by large agri-businesses, all the more reason to read and treasure books such as this one.
Daily life on that post-Depression farm is described in spare but colorful terms by White so that you feel like you are a part of the seasons and challenges. A well supplies water, and heating and cooking are done with wood-fired stoves. Cloth fertilizer sacks provide material for clothing, and people walk or ride a horse to get somewhere. Butter is churned, and cornbread and biscuits are the daily breads. The church and its activities are a cornerstone for life, and radios are just becoming popular and affordable. People talk to one another face-to-face, and a man's word is his bond.
That farm life was a demanding routine that was balanced by the special joys of a close-knit family and a community where hard work and compassion for others was expected and received. You'll rejoice with White when he finally gets a rifle he had long wanted, and you can almost taste that special treat of biscuits with chocolate sauce, fruit in season, and other small pleasures.
White's stories about his friends, especially Ezra (who turned his face sideways when looking at you to compensate for a vision defect) are engaging and often funny, calling to this reviewer's mind similiar characters I knew when growing up.
Some of White's relatives were important figures in the gospel and country music world, and White gives interesting anecdotes about them. There are special sections about his family and neighbors, and the descriptions and many included photos make you feel like part of the same neighborhood Joe knew when growing up.
As White recounts his early years, you can appreciate the foundation that was forged by farm life. Hand-picking cotton, putting up hay, planting and harvesting garden and field crops were all done at the whim of the weather. After that background, a daily job with an established routine and a regular paycheck proved easy indeed.
Soldier, pilot, real-estate agent, association executive, and career federal employee are all hats that Joe White later earned and wore with pride. Forged In A Country Crucible tells how he earned the right to wear them so well.
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This is a true story of a family struggling to survive during the depression of the 1930s. They farmed with two mules and crude farm implements. The land was rocky and the topsoil thin. The boys wore shirts and slept under sheets made from fertilizer sacks, and the mother and the only daughter often wore dresses and underwear made from flour sacks that came with print designs. But they were proud of their independence and didn't want charity. The book gives details about how they farmed in those days and about the families of relatives and friends.
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