Sanitizing the Dirty Thirties -- Little Heathens, Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression

Coming on the heels of The Worst Hard Time about the Dust Bowl in the 30's in Oklahoma, I thought this book would parlay an analysis of the decade in a near-by State. Instead this is a nostalgic white wash by a little old lady, Mildred Armstrong Kalish, who never once mentions threatening weather or lack of money for food. Here's is a simple life, of shoeless days in meadows, cuddly farm animals, passels of cousins, and fortuitous inspiration and education.

Maybe if I were a mid-Westerner, I would prefer this book to Noel Perrin's essays on Vermont. But it covers lots of the same topics of farm life albeit from a child's perspective not a middle aged man who consciously chose that place rather than being born there.

There is nothing that is essentially Iowan about the book either. Picture look like Bennington, Vermont buildings. Recipes and folklore are universally American. It is a charming book as a piece of family history that warrants a private publication and a sharing with distant relatives. That's all.