Patrick’s Day in 1922, on a farm near Garrison, Iowa, in Benton County. Recounted in a luminous narrative filled with tenderness and humor, Kalish’s memoir of her childhood shows how the right stuff can make even the bleakest of times seem like “quite a romp.” Little Heathens offers a loving but realistic portrait of a “hearty-handshake Methodist” family that gave its members a remarkable legacy of kinship, kindness, and remembered pleasures. There was the unsurpassed flavor of tender new dandelion greens harvested as soon as the snow melted the taste of crystal clear marble-sized balls of honey robbed from a bumblebee nest the sweet smell from the body of a lamb sleeping on sun-warmed grass and the magical quality of oat shocking under the light of a full harvest moon. She and her siblings and their cousins from the farm across the way played as hard as they worked, running barefoot through the fields, as free and wild as they dared.įilled with recipes and how-tos for everything from catching and skinning a rabbit to preparing homemade skin and hair beautifiers, apple cream pie, and the world’s best head cheese (start by scrubbing the head of the pig until it is pink and clean), Little Heathens portrays a world of hardship and hard work tempered by simple rewards. She had caring grandparents who possessed-and valiantly tried to impose-all the pioneer virtues of their forebears, teachers who inspired and befriended her, and a barnyard full of animals ready to be tamed and loved.

Kalish counts herself among the lucky of that era. This, however, is not a tale of suffering. With her father banished from the household for mysterious transgressions, five-year-old Mildred and her family could easily have been overwhelmed by the challenge of simply trying to survive.

So begins Mildred Kalish’s story of growing up on her grandparents’ Iowa farm during the depths of the Great Depression. So, partly in response to the basic human instinct to share feelings and experiences, and partly for the sheer joy and excitement of it all, I report on my early life. For many years I have had the urge to describe that treasure trove, lest it vanish forever. I tell of a time, a place, and a way of life long gone.

Mildred armstrong kalish