In the Shadow of Courthouse
Subtitle: Memoir of The 1940s Written As A Novel
Edition: First Edition
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Place of publication: Bloomington, IN
Number of pages: 370
Work titles: Fiction
First sentence: The first day of my life was when I was eight-years-old and met Bobby Witt.  I can remember it well.  I still feel the atoms of my body rearranging themselves.  It was April 1942.
Description: During the WWII years, there was no television, mega sports, big automobiles, or manicured lawns. There was instead radio, movies, high school sports, the Clinton Industrial Baseball League, where men too young or too old to go to war played for the fun of it. Clintonians had victory gardens instead of manicured lawns, drove old jalopies, took the bus, or rode their bicycles to work because Detroit was  making tanks and jeeps for the war, and no new cars.

 It was a time when the four faces of the Clinton County Courthouse clock chimed on the half hour, and threw a metaphorical shadow over young people's lives. This made certain they would not be late for meals made from victory garden staples. The courthouse neighborhood had most stay-at-home mothers in two-parent families. Few parents managed to get beyond grammar school, nearly all worked in Clinton factories or on the railroad.  It was a time in hot weather that people slept with their families in Riverview Park, left windows open, doors unlocked, bicycles on the side of the house, and if they had automobiles, keys in the car, knowing neither neighbor or stranger would disturb their possessions. In winter, schools never closed, even when snow banks were four feet high.

This is a narrative of the lives of young people against the backdrop of the Clinton County Courthouse, St. Patrick's School, Riverview Stadium, Hoot Owl Hollow, Mount St. Clare College, Mill Creek, Beaver Slough, Joyce Slough, the churches, schools and hospitals throughout the city.  There was the United States Army's Schick General Hospital, which brought the war to this place, tending battlefield casualties, the USO, Chicago & North Western Railway, Clinton Foods, Dupont, and many other industrial work places, which were working hard toward the war effort.
Notes: Imagine coming of age in Clinton, Iowa in the middle of the United States, in the middle of the century, and in the middle of this farm belt community of 33,000 on the banks of the Mississippi River during World War Two.

Here young people came of age in the shadow of the courthouse, while the nation struggled to come of age in the shadow of the atomic bomb.

There was no televisions, mega sports, big automobiles, or manicured lawns.  There was radio, movies, high school sports, and a baseball league, where men too young or too old to go to war played for the fun of it.  Clintonians had victory gardens, drove old jalopies, took the bus or rode their bicycles to work.

It was a time when the four faces of the Clinton County Courthouse clock chimed on the half hour and threw a metaphorical shadow over young people’s lives.  It made certain they would not be late for meals made from victory garden staples.

The courthouse neighborhood had most stay-at-home mothers and two-parent families.  Few parents managed to get beyond grammar school, nearly all worked in Clinton’s factories or on the railroad.  Divorce was as foreign as an ancestral language.  

It was a time in hot weather people slept with their families in Riverview Park, left windows open, doors unlocked, bicycles on the side of the house, and if they had an automobile, keys in the car, knowing no one would disturb their possessions.   

This is a narrative of a past unlikely to return.  It was a time when kids created their own play and parents struggled to make a living.  Clinton youngsters would never know such Darwinian freedom again.  It was the engine that fueled the last half of our twentieth century.