Review of "This Is Home Now," by Floyd A. Robinson

Review of

This Is Home Now, by Floyd A. Robinson ISBN 0813817765


Five out of five stars

 The timespan of this book is 1913 to 1926 and the location was an Iowa farm. The author was a boy on that farm, and this is a description of the life he led. You grew up fast in that environment in those days, children as young as six were expected to perform significant tasks, including managing the work horses and even operating machinery. Their workday was generally well-planned in advance and the hours were from pre-dawn to dusk. There were few slack times over the course of the year, most often due to the seasons or a specific weather pattern.

 It was also a time of change, for during this tale, cars made their significant appearance leading to a higher quality of roads being constructed, tractors and gasoline motors were added to the farming process and electricity slowly expanded out from the cities. Accidents were a constant danger, one of the author’s brothers was killed in a farming accident. Had that happened fifty years later, he would have lost a foot, but not his life.

 One interesting aspect of the story is how the main characters extracted the cream from their milk and took it along with their chicken eggs to the local businesses for credit and cash. The sale of dairy products in that manner is now illegal, although there has been a minor movement to allow it once again.

 Life on the farm before there were good roads, government programs for assistance and the local school was truly local was a time of hard work and a continuing sense of accomplishment. For at the end of the day or season, there was no doubt whether you had accomplished your tasks or not. This is a look back to those times, while they were hard, as can be discerned from this book, they were not all bad.