Tales of the Ozarks: True Stories

Tales of the Ozarks: True Stories. Topeka, KS: Preston O. Hale (Undated, but early printing). Stapled softcover, 32 pages. Previous owner's name on front cover; gift inscription from 1966 inside front cover. Text clean and unmarked. Stapled binding intact. Age discoloration to edges of front and back covers.

Author's Preface (1963): This is a group of events that impressed a growing boy who moved to an Ozark farm at the age of four years in the year of 1893. He came there from the flat muddy swamplands of northern Illinois. His memory of the northland was largely of Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, Christmastime and a tin horn that made a loud noise. Most of all, he remembered the periodic trips of Grandma who came each Christmas and later moved south to live with them. He always remembered not only the endless mud in the North, but his sore, bruised bare feet that trod the Ozark hills. His adventures were priceless, his work was backbreaking, but his spirit and joy of living were the foundation of a bountiful manhood. It was frontier living--the foundation of our nation. It was growing up in the great out-of-doors where each new adventure was a lesson in nature, where values were not measured in dollars, but in personal experiences.~~Author's Preface