Research Catalog

Title

The one-room schoolhouse : stories about the boys / Jim Heynen.

Author

Heynen, Jim, 1940-

Publication

New York : Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 1993.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

224 pages : illustrations; 20 cm

Summary

• Here - in more than one hundred perfectly pitched, sometimes perverse, and always surprising stories - Jim Heynen displays his mastery of country wisdom, speech, and behavior as he reveals "the boys" in all their oddity, wonder, and puzzlement. These are midwestern farm kids finding their way, contending with grown-ups, city kids, birth, bats, death, rats, skunks, and even mean ponies. Or choosing between corncobs and peach tissues, hurling rotten eggs, getting in trouble, helping out, and trying to conceive of the mountains and oceans and forests they've never seen. Their adventures are an education in the natural world, as well as an acknowledgment of whatever is common or strange in human nature. "These stories resemble legends more than anything else," according to CoEvolution Quarterly, "based as they are on experiences and responses that could occur anywhere at any time.".
• The importance of all this - for the boys and for us - is in discovering what to make of a way of life that is disappearing before our disbelieving eyes. And in this, his first major collection, Jim Heynen shows himself to be an unsurpassed observer and storyteller whose work - whether true or just funny, sad or even magical - is very much in the American grain.

Subject

• Country life > Iowa > Fiction

Contents

• What Happened During the Ice Storm -- The First-Calf Heifer -- Betcha Don't Dare -- Spring Grass -- Big Bull -- Bloating and Its Remedies -- Catching Pigeons -- Rotten Eggs -- The Hernia -- Dancing With Chickens -- The Skunk Room -- Walking Home from School -- The Pet Rabbit -- Hog Calls -- Dinner Music -- Spontaneous Combustion -- A Good Day -- Daydreams -- Fall -- Electricity -- The Hike -- The Youngest Boy -- Thinking About the Snow -- Eye to Eye -- Spring -- Head Lice -- The Throw-Up Pan -- Bat Wings -- Ringworm -- The Inside Rats -- Some Theories on Rat Tails -- Box-Elder Bugs -- The Dandelion -- Corncobs and Peach Tissues -- Swimming -- Specs -- The Insurance Adjustor -- The Shotgun -- Bird Songs -- They Are Like Calves -- The Pony -- The Driver -- The Dream -- The-One-Room Schoolhouse -- Habits -- Church Bears -- One Dead Chicken -- House Visitation -- Gypsies -- The Converts -- Tornado -- Hoof Rot -- Night Hunting -- The New Minister -- The Minister's Wife -- Gas.
• You Know What Is Right -- Butterflies -- Thinking About the City -- Who Didn't Want an Indoor Toilet -- Scar Tissue -- The Seesaw -- Pocket Gopher Feet -- Pies -- Sheds -- Yellow Girl -- The Good Hider -- The Bidder -- Who Kept One Hand in Her Pocket -- Who Grew Snakes in Her Orchard -- Who Looked Under His Car -- The Old Waitress -- The Old Man -- Neither Coming Nor Going -- Who Didn't Like Mean Tomcats -- Gotcha -- Dehorning -- What Are They Missing? -- The Silage Pit -- The Coyotes Are Coming Back -- The Good-Luck Necklace -- The Well -- The Girls -- Nature's Way -- Dead Possum -- Demolition Derby -- The Rat Cage Trap -- June Bugs -- What If -- Turpentine and Corncobs -- The Harvest -- Playing Soldier -- Fireflies -- The Forest -- The Ocean -- The Mountains -- Snow -- Skiing -- Don't You Ever Forget It -- Popcorn -- The Tongue Incident -- Progress -- The Grandfather.

ISBN

0679417869 :

LCCN

92054805

OCLC

• 27144131
• ocm27144131

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries