Title: Ridge stories : herding hens, powdering pigs, and other recollections from a boyhood in the Driftless /
Authors: Jones, Gary, 1944-
Year: 2019
Subjects: Jones, Gary, Childhood and youth.; Dairy farms Wisconsin Richland County.; Country life Wisconsin Richland County.; Country life; Dairy farms; Manners and customs; Richland County (Wis.) Social life and customs.; Richland County (Wis.) Biography.; Driftless Area Social life and customs.; Driftless Area Biography.; United States Driftless Area; Wisconsin Richland County
Abstract: "Ridge Stories is a memoir of a boy born in 1944 and raised in the Driftless Region of Wisconsin on a small dairy farm on Pleasant Ridge. In a collection of interrelated stories of farm, family, neighbors, church, school, and food, Gary Jones gets real about life in rural Wisconsin, from amusing anecdotes about oversized overalls and baths before indoor plumbing, to more serious reflections about the challenges of growing up with a depressed mother to realizing the shortcomings of his homogenous upbringing"--
Contents: If the overalls fit -- Rubber duckies -- Edna -- All things Indian -- Pleasant Ridge School -- Reading, writing, and sledding -- A cold lunch program -- Do ghosts eat cake? -- Ida -- Putting powder on a pig -- Free-range chickens -- Charlotte -- Defense -- Hike to Steeple Rock -- In Gramp's shoes -- Farm forecasts -- The grasshopper -- Milking time -- Making hay while the sun shines -- Threshing on the ridge -- Getting up wood -- Down on the farm, TV style -- Memorial Day on Pleasant Ridge -- When angels wore bedsheets -- Minnie and Mae -- The church band -- The Catholics -- Hills and valleys -- Snowbound -- Mixed nuts -- Within walking distance -- The good life -- Steve Bryant, the storyteller -- Victor, the pig-cutter -- The pressure cooker -- Silas Breese -- Cursing like a farmwife -- The longs and the shorts of it -- Ain't that pretty -- Foods of the Ridge -- Good gardens -- Uncle Jake -- Raspberry queen of the Ridge -- A life of pie -- Crazy quilter -- Searching for my father -- Burying my father.