© 2022 Michael Hankins
260 pages
Ahh, boyhood. A time for digging out forts in the sides of hills, running from water moccasins at the creek, and repeatedly bashing .45 ACP rounds to see what’s inside. I stumbled upon this book while researching a Selma suburb for a patron: it’s the childhood memories of an Air Force brat who lived everywhere from Florida to Alaska, including several years just outside of Selma in a trailer park near the now-defunct Air Force training base, Craig Field. Although I initially bought the book to experience the Selma stories, Hankins experienced life all over the country, from the Texas desert to the wilds of Alaska. He wrote this, he says at the outset, to prove that the average Joe has something to say, and to give his kids and grands some idea of their family’s life from the 1950s to the 1970s. The stories are presented largely chronologically, delivered in a personal tone, and run the gamut. Early on, it’s boyish antics: exploring, setting off explosives, building, tinkering, and getting into fights over girls with guys who will later become best friends. After the move to Alaska, where Hankins comes to maturity, we switch to stories about outdoors adventures (and misadventures, like escaping floods and moose), cars, guns, etc. He also includes one story written about his father and mother crash-landing a small plane into the mountains and then having to spend a bitterly cold night waiting for rescue. This is an easy read and enjoyable for me, but I’ll admit to be being predisposed to like it: my father worked at the same Air Force base, and my first six years of life were spent in a trailer park not a mile away from Hankins’ home, so I both knew the area and was utterly fascinated by seeing it differently in better years through his eyes — something he makes even better by including photos from the period!
Highlights:
Many kids, including myself, found M-80s the perfect propellant for homemade mortars. I’d take a piece of pipe then hammer a good portion of it into the ground. A lit M-80 would be dropped in the open end with a round rock to follow. With a loud explosion, the projectile would go flying completely out of sight. I always pointed my mortar into the woods to avoid hitting anyone, forgetting all about the resident moose, bear, and porcupines.
Related:
The author’s blog
The Other Side of Selma, R.B. “Dickie” Williams. Memories of living and working in Selma in this same period, but from a young adult. 2010 review here; 2019 re-read here.
Too Hill Too High for a Stepper, Mike Mahan. Boyhood memories of growing up in Montevallo in the ’40s and ’50s.
Reading Freely 
‘Kind of’ the same thing… I picked up a book a while back about Toxteth, which is the area of Liverpool I was born in and had my first 5 years growing up. The author grew up in the same area (obviously) and even went to the same Infants school just a few years before I did. There’s some interesting photographs included which brought back so (very vague!) memories! Probably read it next year.
That’s an interesting place name, to say the least. Looks to be a version of Stochestede? The photos in this were interesting but saddening. That highway was so alive when the Base was active, and now it’s full of abandoned buildings and scrapyards.
“Stochestede”, i.e. “the stockaded or enclosed place”, from the Anglo-Saxon stocc “stake” and Anglo-Saxon stede “place”
Oh, there’s a LOT of that sort of thing around [grin]. Most place names are either Roman, Viking or Anglo-Saxon, often the modern bastardised version of the name modified over hundreds and hundreds of years of use.
That area was in the Danelaw, I think?
Probably on the Danelaw/Mercia boundary being an old Anglo-Saxon name. When we left Liverpool (when I was 10) we moved to a place called Skelmersdale. That’s *definitely* Danelaw and only around 15 miles further East! [lol]