The narrator of this story is John Ames a 76 year old preacher who has lived almost all of his life in Gilead, Iowa. He is writing a letter to his almost seven-year-old son, the blessing of his second marriage. It is a summing-up, an apologia, a consideration of his life. Robinson takes the story away from being simply the reminiscences of one man and moves it into the realm of a meditation on fathers and children, particularly sons, on faith, and on the imperfectability of man.

It’s a great read, slow paced but moving. When I read it I read and listened to the audio version as well. Below is a short version of my on small town experience.

My Gilead was a small town in Florida called Apopka, pop, 2500. Apopka is an Indian word meaning “big potato.” That’s about the only thing there that was big. The town was essentially a block long in a square but not one with a court house sitting in the middle. My mom and dad’s place of business set just one business off the main driving street, Hwy 441 (running north and south). My family owned two businesses, my mom ran the clothing store and my dad, for many years, was the town’s only barber. The town had two brothers at opposite ends of the spectrum: one was mayor, the other was literally the town drunk. The mayor then is still the mayor now (some 53 years). There was only one short period of time that our next door neighbor was mayor (about two years as I remember). We had two “drug stores” only a city block separating them on the main highway. One had a pharmacy the other did not. I worked in the one that did not have a pharmacy during high school. The owners name was Elmer but fondly called “Tug” a nickname given him in his youth because he used to “tug” around (or pull) a wagon all over town. We had what we referred to as the town midget (although never to his face) who was married to the town beauty (drop dead gorgeous or at least to the guys my age, and whose mom could really look like that?).

The days were hot and muggy and the nights weren’t much better. Bugs were always present, everything from flies to mosquitoes to fire flies to cockroaches (palmetto bugs as the rich would call them) that sometimes could be three inches long. Oranges and ferns were the businesses to be in (of course my father never found that out). Orange trees as far as the eyes could see were everywhere. Pulling a tree ripe orange, peeling it and eating it on the spot, nothing better. The sub name of Apopka was: The Fern City and later became known as “The Indoor Foliage Capital of the World.” I didn’t mention that we had two Apopka’s: white town and “colored” town as it was called. (I really remember being told to only drink water at the “white” fountains not the ones marked “colored.” I disobeyed often, just for the hell of it.)

I lived with my parents behind the business they owned for 10 plus years where my backyard was an alley to the main four blocks of the town. We moved in my early teens to a house about four blocks away in the residential area. The school was only a block away from my house during my elementary school days and then the high school moved about a mile away (9 blocks from my new home) where I attended high school.

Everyone knew where the “parkin’ and spoonin’” place in town was. Now there’s a word that has changed its metaphorical meaning.

We had one movie theater that played matinees only on Saturday and Sunday. My family believed, especially my mom, that going to a movie was a sin so it was always a small war to get a quarter to attend a matinee and watch Abbot and Costello along with a five minute serial production in which the protagonist would always be in a “fix” and one had to wait till the next week to see the next in the ongoing story. (This is somewhat like watching the recent Alias TV shows in which Sydney Bristow gets in a fix about every 10 minutes or so and one has to wait for the commercial to see the outcome).

BTW: My mom’s parting shot every Saturday of my life as I wiggled a quarter from her to “go to the matinee” was: “just remember son, if Jesus comes while you are watching the movie, you won’t go to be with him, and you will spend eternity in hell with the devil.”

We had one cemetery in town which was just two blocks from where my family moved. My dad would often report that when he drove by the place it seemed like the “loneliness place in town” and one day he would be there along with others. It’s true, his body and that of my mom, oldest brother, and only sister are there, the latter not 12 feet from the former.

The church we attended was a small Pentecostal church that my mom and dad attended from the time it was organized. (Church of God, Cleveland, TN). I lived in this small environment for the first 19 years of my life before leaving to join the USAF. Later I asked my sister to help me remember who the pastor’s were because I remembered some rapid change during my teens. When she made a list (she was the church piano player for 64 years of her life) there were 20 pastors in the 19 years that I lived there.

So I never really knew a country pastor who got to stay around and care for his flock. For the most part I only remember the “backside” of the pastor as he was leaving, another causality of the next largest midget in town whose wife looked like the south side of a cow walking north.

Because my dad was the only barber, everyone in town knew him and by extension knew me. Ya couldn’t get away with anything, a curse that I am sure now was a blessing. We had great traditions that were passed on from one generation to another. One of the fondest ones was finding an outhouse, hopefully empty, putting in on the backend of a truck on Halloween and hoist it onto the top of the school house, and all that without getting caught by the local police who doubled as KKK members.

I remember the first “white” cafe who hired a “negro” waitress. The next day there was a “red” cross painted on the window. The police did nothing. The owner fired the waitress and things returned to normal or abnormal as the case may be.

So that a bird’s eye view of my Gilead.