Reed City Boy [Paperback]

Timothy James Bazzett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 21, 2008

Meet Tim Bazzett, fifty years ago. This book is not so much a memoir as a rambling and luminous letter he is writing to his kids. In it he pays tribute and homage to his parents, to his teachers, and to Reed City, the town that shaped him. Mining his earliest memories, Bazzett tells of childhood scrapes, homemade toys, playing cowboys and "war" and even comes clean about an embarrassing feat of flatulence in a most unlikely place which became legend in family lore. He takes you along to Indian Lake, where he spent his summers swimming, and to Saturday matinees at the Reed Theater, where he learned homespun values from Gene and Roy. You'll meet the nuns who educated him at St. Philip's School, where he learned to dance and diagram. Early struggles with sex, sin and "Catholic guilt" are given their due, along with a short-lived religious vocation and a stint at the seminary. A "pseudo-farm kid," Bazzett tells too of his trials with cows, chickens, and picking pickles; and of lessons in "animal psychology" learned from his grandfather. His high school years are marred by pimples, dorkiness, and pining for the "popular" girls, but brightened by a few close friends and some minor successes on the basketball court. He loves some of his teachers, clashes with others, and even terrorizes one, as he fumbles his way toward manhood. It's all here - the work, the play, the frustrations and the joys of growing up working-class and Catholic in the heart of small-town America. Anyone who has been there will chuckle, remember and relate to Reed City Boy.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A good, honest and straightforward portrait ... A touching story." -- Ronald Jager, author of Eighty Acres: Elegy for a Family Farm

"A real piece of American history. Very well done: honest, frank and very Midwestern (and from me that's praise)." -- Samuel Hynes, Professor Emeritus of Literature at Princeton University and author of The Growing Seasons

"Devilishly funny! ... A witty, hilarious style so often missing from memoirs ... A very American boy's life." -- Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli, Traverse City Record-Eagle

"Tim Bazzett has written the perfect book about living in a small town ... Funny, poignant, and blazingly honest." -- Doug Stanton, author of NY Times bestseller, In Harm's Way

"We share much the same background ... Reed City Boy is evocative of a lost world." -- Michael Dirda, Senior Editor of The Washington Post Book World and author of An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Rathole Books (March 21, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0977111903
• ISBN-13: 978-0977111909
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 8 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,818,671 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in 1944, Tim Bazzett grew up in west Michigan and spent three years in the army after high school, completing tours in Turkey and Germany. He then attended Ferris State and Central Michigan Universities where he earned a teaching degree and an MA in English. After teaching for five years at Monroe County Community College in southeast Michigan, in 1976 Bazzett reenlisted in the army, staying five years that time, serving again in Germany and earning a second Master's degree from Eastern Michigan University. Following his discharge he worked for the next 21 years as a Russian linguist and intelligence analyst at the National Security Agency in Maryland. He retired from federal service at the end of 2001 and returned to his home town in Michigan where he began to write. Since 2004, Bazzett has published three memoirs and a biography. Another memoir will be published in 2010.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Was Charmed, March 21, 2009

By 

Molly Gloss (Portland, Oregon, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Reed City Boy (Paperback)

I've been pondering why I loved this book so much. Nothing very exciting happens in it. It's just a scrupulously honest remembrance of growing up in a small town in the 1950s - growing up in a mostly functional family, which means there's not a lot of conflict or interior angst. So why did it feel like a page turner? Why was I so charmed by it? A friend who fancies herself a Serious Reader (Proust, one of her faves) loved REED CITY BOY too, and we spent a fair bit of time trying to figure out why the book works so well. Well, it's beautifully written, by a guy who obviously knows the craft all the way down to the level of the sentence. And there's not a false or insincere or self-serving note in it anywhere, which is oh so rare in a memoir. And I guess we recognized ourselves, our own growing-up years, on these pages, even though Reed City, Michigan is a couple of thousand miles from Gresham, Oregon where I grew up, or Miami, my friend's childhood home. (Not to mention the little matter that Tim's a guy and we're girls.) I guess Tim Bazzett, writing about the ordinary events of an ordinary life, just managed to say some important things about childhood and adolescence. And it resonated with us. Or maybe he's just a fun guy to hang out with for a couple of hundred pages.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful Rendering, February 2, 2010

By 

Donald Lystra (Omena, MI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Reed City Boy (Paperback)

Reed City Boy is a wonderful rendering of a particular time and place and people; but it is much more than that: it is the story of American small town life in the 1950s and 60s, when people were more attached to the land and to each other, and the sense of actually belonging somewhere was palpably strong. Tim Bazzett has some fondness for that time, and his book will persuade you that he has every right to that fondness. As I read his accounts I was reminded that America was once a country of small towns, and that the qualities those places instilled built something unique and wonderful in the American character. Bazzett's writing helps us to remember those qualities, and in that sense he has created a valuable document that should be widely read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Same place, but different, December 14, 2009

By 

Roderick McGillis (Calgary, AB) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Reed City Boy (Paperback)

REED CITY BOY tells the story of coming of age in a small Michigan town. Reading this story, I was reminded of my own growing up just as several other readers were too. Tim Bazzett tells a familiar story of boyhood in the 1950s and early 60s, and he tells this story with candor and fondness for a time that distance desires to render nostalgic, but reason warns us to judge with care. Judge with care because the time Bazzett writes about was not only innocent, but also dark around the edges. In this book we hear about summer cottages by the lake, cowboy heroes of the silver screen, casual jobs on farms or in grocery stores, school basketball teams, teachers whose influence has lasted into senior years, high school graduation, grandparents, family dynamics, learning to drive, and first adventures in dating. We also hear about pimples, unwanted haircuts, masturbation, smoking, church confession, and the constant presence of sex in the fantasy life of a teenager. What we might also hear, if we listen closely, is unspoken family tension, the loneliness haunting a young life, and the growing unrest of the Kennedy years and what followed. And when I say "hear," I mean we accompany the writer as he candidly tells the story of his childhood and youth; we hear his words as if he was in the room with us - his asides, his colloquial expressions, his exclamations, his pauses while we leave the room to try out a game he has described (truth to tell, I did not try the broom game). In other words, this is a very readable book that tells a story many readers who grew up in the post war period will recognize. Readers who grew up in a later time will learn much about their parents' generation, and readers who grew up in an even later (more recent) time will find the descriptions of life 50 years ago amusing and perhaps even salutary. When I say that readers like myself will recognize much that Bazzett describes in this book, I am sure that this is true. However, a secondary effect of reading this book for me is the reminder that my life was (and how could it not have been?) quite different. And herein is an unexpected pleasure derived from Bazzett's book. Not only have I enjoyed hearing about the early years of a boy in the 1950s and early 60s and getting to know someone I have never met, but I have also felt the nudge of recollection. REED CITY BOY prompts one to check back in his (or her) own life to see what went on then. The book stirs memory. This is welcome. And I do not think that memory is something for the senior, but rather for anyone who desires to understand how we become the person we are at any time in our development. To put this another way, I recommend this book to any reader of any age. It is funny, honest, and remarkably full in its recollection of years many of us have buried deep in the recesses of our subconscious. I leave this book knowing I shall revisit it, and eager to move on to the next years in the life of this engaging author.