little heathens by mildred armstrong kalish

It’s not merely that she appreciated the values instilled by the Great Depression, or that now, in her older years, she wants to preserve memories of a lost time (though all this is true). But this memoir is richer than that, filled with fervency, urgency and one amazing twist, which surprised me to the point of a delighted, audible gasp: Mildred Armstrong Kalish absolutely loved her childhood. Or: “When one of us kids received a scratch, cut or puncture, we didn’t run to the house to be taken care of.” If all that “Little Heathens” offered, then, were more such hard-times homilies, this would not be much of a book. “We were taught that if you bought something it should last forever - or as close to forever as we could contrive,” Kalish reports predictably. And they moved in with those strict Iowan grandparents (two rigid souls who “never completely made it into the 20th century”) which is where young Mildred’s story really commences - on a farm where “a family of five was now the responsibility of two old people,” and the business of instilling character in the young ones began in earnest.įor anyone from an old-school farming background, this is familiar territory. After her father disappeared, Mildred and her mother and siblings simply moved on - emotionally and literally.

Surely one could milk volumes of pain (and book deals) from such misfortune! But Kalish - while publishing in 2007 - still holds the values of 1935, when people coped quite differently with their sorrows. No self-respecting modern memoirist (myself included!) would ever abandon such a juicy bit of suffering as a banished father. Now that, I must say, flies in the face of all current literary convention. What is remarkable, however, is that Mildred’s shamed father - after being mentioned briefly in Chapter 1 of her lovely memoir, “Little Heathens” - is never spoken of again for the entire duration of this book. Rural, Methodist Iowans during the Great Depression were not a soft lot when folks got unforgiven back then, they stayed unforgiven. That Mildred’s father’s name was never again spoken in her presence is not remarkable, given the time and place. To put it more bluntly, the dad was banished - forced out of town by Mildred’s strict Iowa grandfather, a farmer, on account of “some transgression that was not to be disclosed to us children, though we overheard whispered references to bankruptcy, bootlegging and jail time.”

When Mildred Armstrong Kalish was around 5 years old, her father disappeared from her life forever.

Little heathens by mildred armstrong kalish