Ben Logan

A nostalgic look back at growing up on a farm in Gays Mills, Crawford County, Wisconsin in the 1920's and 30's. This classic American memoir is about a farm and its people, of a boyhood on a southwestern Wisconsin hilltop world in the 1930's. Ben Logan grew up on Seldom Seen Farm with his three brothers, father, mother, and hired hand Lyle—“the fifth Logan boy.” The boys discussed and argued and joked over the events around their farm, marked the seasons by the demands of the land, tested each other and themselves, and grew up learning timeless lessons.… (mehr)

5499. The Land Remembers The Story of a Farm and Its People, by Ben Logan (read 12 Sep 2017) The author of this book, which was first published in 1975, was born in southwestern Wisconsin in 1920. The book tells of his growing up on the farm operated by his Norway-born father. The author was the youngest of four sons. and there was a hired man, Lyle. While the author is only 8 years older than me, the farm life he describes is seemingly devoid of electriciity, and tractors played little role in the farming life he describes. The only car mentioned is a Model T. Some of the stories told are surely exaggerated to make them more noteworthy, but the account is often poignant. The author's parents were good people, and the mother especially seems to have been a hard-working and patient woman , and one feels for her since she had no daughter to help her and though there was a hired man permanently, there is no mention of a hired girl--though the author, as the youngest boy, did help his mother more than her husband and the other boys did. So much of the story resonated with me, and I could not help but compare the life described with my own rural upbringing, even though there were some great differences: we never went fishing, we grew no tobacco, we went to school in town--the author was in a one room school apparently for all 8 grades. It is sad that the author's mother died when the author was 16. The author went on to college and served as a naval officer in World War II. He died Sep 19, 2014, after returning to live on the same farm where he grew up. There are a lot of good things about this book and anyone interested in farm life in the 1920's and 1930's will be moved and enwrapped in the book. I was.… (mehr)