FLATWOODS AND LIGHTERKNOTS

Flatwoods and Lighterknots is a sensitively humorous, often hilarious, and sometimes penetratingly sad story about a young boy’s experiences as he was growing up in the coastal plains of Georgia during the 1940’s and 1950’s, an era many people might recall with trepidation or nostalgic reverence; perhaps both.  Children who grew up during World War II were born to parents who were still dealing with the social and financial aftermath of a war to end all wars, a great depression, and were again facing the barrels of yet another war.  It was a time when many Americans were still living who had experienced a war from an earlier century, a war that was continuing to divide a nation and its people.  It was also a time when America was still mostly rural and people traveled to town only for those necessities that couldn’t be produced on their farms or bartered from their neighbors.  Country stores and churches were their social centers while workdays were spent tending to chores on family farms that were slowly fading from existence in a fast changing society.  Most families spent their winter evenings huddled around their fireplaces or kitchen stoves listening to the only radio in the house.  Summer evenings were spent on their front porches listening to the sounds of the night and telling tales of days long gone. 

Flatwoods and Lighterknots is a literary pictorial as well as a history of a part of America that captures, for perpetuity, an almost forgotten way of life.  It even serves as a guide for the preparation of a few special southern dishes and drinks.  A young boy of the times is the reader’s tour guide as he makes both comical and poignant observations about a life that was interesting and exciting, yet unpredictable and sometimes even dangerous.  Several chapters are introduced by poems written in lyrical form and composed by the young boy as he witnessed the moments. 

Cane grindings, fox hunting, and fishing and swimming in waters not yet polluted are described in ways that beckon memories back to more innocent times.  Dog lovers, horse lovers, and people who love people will appreciate how the author treats relationships between his characters and various kinds of animals.  The characters are actual representatives of their times, people who were attempting to deal with the frustrations of being caught on a time bridge between old ways and new technologies.  Electricity, television, paved roads, telephones, and more powerful automobiles were pushing Americans to the brink of an unknown world, a world now taken for granted by the children of this age of instant information and casual pleasures. 

Children born to America before the advent of World War II have little to identify themselves as a separate generation.  Their contributions have been eclipsed by the antics of their younger brothers and sisters who were conceived during steamy wartime furloughs or passionate reunions after the war.  These infants of the post war years would later be known as war babies and baby boomers.  They grew up enjoying national security, economic prosperity, V-8 engines, and television while their parents were fretting over atomic bombs, communism, and tight budgets.  They were born too late to remember seeing droves of warplanes flying over their homes, new conscripts going to war to the sound of marching bands, or to smell the bandages on those who came home without a parade.  And they were too young to remember seeing men return to broken marriages and women crying over men who would never come home.  They were America’s first generation to receive the benefits of victory over oppression without having an understanding of its price, and they became the flower children of the sixties. 

The children who lived the war years, witnessed the happy reunions, and saw the tragedies that war visited upon their lives were blessed with much closer ties to the past.  It was a kind of connection to history that gave significance to their lives, a deep respect for the achievements of their forefathers, and a strong sense of responsibility to their nation.  Although this book is not about the specific differences between two factions of a generation split by the inconveniences of war, such is the setting from whence the words in this book did spring.  Each story portrays an incident that is reflective of a time when life was hard but good and challenges were many.  People who can remember the war years and who are now witnessing the unfolding of a new millennium will be able to identify with the author’s characters.  Their children and grandchildren might even gain a greater understanding and appreciation for the contributions of those who came before them. 

Flatwoods and Lighterknots is a cameo peek into the lives of a few people who were attempting to adjust, in their individual yet sometimes clumsy ways, to sudden changes that were occurring around them in a world that was being overtaken by the courses of events.  Each story contains a message that was delivered to a young boy as he experienced the moment, even though the meanings might not come clear to him until much later in life.  The people portrayed in this book are representative of the kinds of souls who keep the home fires burning when there is no one else around to care enough to want to feel the warmth of the American dream. 

Flatwoods and Lighterknots now invites you to walk down this little path of words and take a glimpse back into a time when watermelons, grapes, and tomatoes were allowed to ripen on their vines, and to a place where people spoke softly of their neighbors and proudly of their forefathers who had given them a kind of life that no human society had ever before experienced, and nevermore.