The heartwarming true story of a young man's journey from childhood on a South Carolina sharecropper's farm, through adolescence to manhood in a North Carolina cotton mill town during the Great Depression of the nineteen-thirties.
Although those were difficult years, this is not just a story of hard times and deprivation. Rather it is an account of how ordinary working people, people like the Author and his family, faced the hardships of the Depression, and not only survived, but managed to live nearly normal lives during one of the most challenging periods in our country's history.
It was a time when a one-dollar Daisy Air Rifle from Santa Claus was a never- to-be-forgotten miracle to a ten year old boy; when everyone from the youngest to the oldest found ways to earn a little something to add to the family coffer; and a time when Mama took in boarders to help put food on the table for her family.
But it was also a time that brought families closer together; when the annual Birthday Dinner for Grandpa was the big event of the year; and simple pleasures, like swimming in the old muddy South Fork River or playing baseball on a dirt field with a taped-up broken bat, were enjoyed to the fullest and became cherished memories in years to come.
And some of the best of these memories were those of Mama's boarding house.