Carter's Memoir

Carter’s Memoir

By Rosanne Gulisano

I blog about snippets and snapshots of the memoirs and life stories of everyday folks attending my Lifestories workshops. I have changed the names, but the stories are the real thing, from the plain and simple to the exotic and dangerous. Enjoy!

Life Along the River

Memories of life along the Mississippi River often include the devastating effects of frequent flooding.

Carter began writing his memoir of that time in his life and wasn’t quite sure where his writing would lead him. His work on his own life stories soon dovetailed into a 1940s history of the western Illinois county where he was raised on the family farm.

The town and surrounding area of Savannah, Illinois, was a close-knit community and it wasn’t possible to tell his own stories without making them part of local history and lore. His memoir turned out to be a local history of rugged people in an uncompromising environment. Events, both happy and challenging, and stories of his neighbors and his town during the era of his boyhood are included in Carter’s stories. He plans to donate the completed memoir to the local historical society when he is finished writing.

When Carter was just a boy of nine, a creek running through their property flooded out the fields after the crops had been planted. One early morning, Carter’s dad, uncle, older brother and he climbed into a flat-bottomed fishing boat to survey the damage. Their mission was to see if any of the crops for that season could be saved.

Even at his young age, Carter could feel the tension as they surveyed acre after acre of flooded out fields. On top of a small rise in the earth, his father spotted a small patch of earth with the young wheat plants waving their pale arms. It amounted to less than an acre of viable potential harvest. The rough and rugged spirit of the Midwest farmer was put into words as his father joked, “That’s it, boy. That’s all yours to cultivate through the season!”

Farming has its good moments and its disastrous ones. This memory of a man’s boyhood stands out in his mind as proof of the enduring, dogged determination of Midwest farmers along the Mississippi and its tributaries.