In a Valley Surrounded by Hills: Stories of Growing Up in a Pennsylvania Town [Paperback]

Don Skinner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 12, 2003

If you enjoy this book, you should really give the credit to my wife. Absent her encouragement, it might never have been written. She'd listened to my Meadville stories for years, finally urging cheerfully, "You know, you really should write a book." So I wrote two other books. She loved them both. But they weren't the book she wanted. I was skeptical. "Who would want to read a book about me growing up?" "Well, your grandchildren, among others." My initial efforts were tentative at best: a bit of story here, a fragment there, until finally (partly because of the writing itself?) it began to sink in that she had a point. Our stories are more important than we realize. The very telling of them summons back to consciousness not just the places where our pasts unfolded but the people who inhabited them, places and people that shaped who we are and, to some extent, who we may yet become. The more deeply I probed those far-off memories, the more brightly my childhood town lit up around me, and the larger became the company of shadows who gathered around my chair, looking over my shoulder and prodding me to remember. Because places change, we no longer see ourselves in them-until we revisit them as they were, and see ourselves again as we were. Maybe, I thought, reading my story will help others to explore their own, to find out how their hometowns, and the people who lived there, matter in ways they'll not grasp unless they go there. One other consideration drove the writing. Stories deserve to be told well. Forty years of preaching, teaching and writing have taught me the importance of that. If I have done nothing else here, I have tried to tell my stories in such a way that their beauty and fun-and their sad mortality-remain unmistakably present. How well I succeeded I'll leave for you to judge.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Born in Meadville, Pennsylvania in 1932, Don Skinner attended Meadville’s public schools through tenth grade and graduated from the Mercersburg Academy, in southern Pennsylvania, in 1950. Returning to Meadville, he enrolled in Allegheny College, dropping out in the middle of his third year to spend two years in the U.S. Army. He graduated from Allegheny in 1956, completed theological studies at Yale University (1959), and earned a doctorate in the social sciences at Syracuse University (1966). The same June, he was ordained in the United Church of Christ. His professional career was divided among three college campuses, culminating at Allegheny as dean of students (1978-85), and chaplain (1985-93). In 1994 he was named chaplain emeritus of the college. Retiring to his wife Patricia’s home state of Oregon, they spent eleven months building their own home, followed by eleven months recovering from building their own home. In 2002, however, they returned to Meadville! where they now make their home. Don and Patricia share five sons, one daughter and thirteen grandchildren. This is Don’s third book. Previous titles include A Passage through Sacred History and Prayers for the Gathered Community. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

No frustration beset this cowboy like pulling the trigger of my single shot Red Ryder pistol only to hear the hammer clack metallically, and impotently, against the chamber. Before I could re-cock the weapon and stuff a fresh cap into the slot, Ronnie Wolfe, whose dad owned a hardware store so he always had the best, would round the corner with his automatic and put me in boot hill.

This was not a good thing, because I didn’t have boots. I had tennis shoes, with white rubber soles and canvas uppers and red rubber circles glued on the sides over my ankle bones. They looked about as much like cowboy boots as our Chevy sedan looked like C.G. Mercatoris' Lincoln Continental. Things got even more ridiculous when we played during cold weather and I had to wear my clodhoppers, which resembled pointy-toed cowboy boots less than they did Monongahela River coal barges. And the older I got, the bigger they got. Someone once observed that if we Skinner boys didn't have so much turned under for feet, we'd all be seven feet tall. Imagine being a single mother to three teenaged boys who wore size twelve to thirteen shoes. Just keeping us shod took a dreadful toll on the family budget. Long before I was old enough to lose interest in playing cowboy, I looked like Gene Autry in combat boots. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 508 pages
• Publisher: Franklin Street Books (September 12, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592990304
• ISBN-13: 978-1592990306
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,955,584 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful story, beautifully presented..., October 24, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: In a Valley Surrounded by Hills: Stories of Growing Up in a Pennsylvania Town (Hardcover)

Don Skinner's new memoir of growing up in northwest Pennsylvania in the 1930s and '40s is is a must-have for folks with a small-town upbringing, those with a passing interest in community life of half a century ago, or anyone looking for a lovely, comforting, satisfying book. This chronicle is often laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes throat-catchingly poignant, and always vividly and expertly presented.

The most striking aspect this book is Skinner's incredible imagery: whether he is describing an unanticipated trip down Main Street attached by his snowsuit to the bumper of a Model T Ford, or an impoverished African-American man plucking lumps of coal from the floodwaters of a creek, or a squabble with his sister and brothers to claim the cream at the top of the morning milk-bottle, the reader is instantly and charmingly transported into young Don's world.

While the greater part of the book describes a gentle community and a child's life in a loving, close-knit family, Skinner doesn't shy away from tackling more troubling issues, both personal and societal: his father's untimely death when Skinner was only seven; the failure of the local educational system to recognize and address his learning disability; the years of World War II, when an unbearable number of the town's sons and daughters left and never returned; the tacit subculture of racism; the simmering anti-Catholic bias of some of the community's Protestants. This is by no means a view through rose-colored spectacles, but Skinner treats his subject with wisdom, sagacity, and affection. A very enjoyable read.