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Growing Up True: Lessons from a Western Boyhood
Written in a compellingly simple style, Growing Up True evokes the struggles of a boy stretching for manhood in rural Colorado during and after World War II. But the lessons and demands of real life always nipped at the edges of his fantastic dreams.
- GenresNonfiction
248 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 17, 2017
A memoir of growing up the third of three boys in Arapahoe County, Colorado. The book takes place in the five years between his father coming home from WWII and his father leaving for the Korean Conflict. Although the father was an engineer, the family collected animals and built a barn. Craig became a man, learning to not let himself "be carried away."
August 27, 2020
"There is something worth remembering of the luminous, ordinary lives of people who started out on water soup, home-schooled, who carried the frontier in their bones, even on their farthest journeys, and who knew from the soil and the wind and the rising of life in the spring that almost everyone has a chance to come through the thrashing more or less golden." These are the closing words in this autobiography and they give you a taste of the thoughtful prose found throughout this story. If you liked Little Britches and/or just love great writing, this is a must read. Of course, the fact that this story takes place not far from where I live likely causes me to love it that little bit more. I will just share a few more of the gems from its pages and then you will see!
"For my dad rain meant the time before the lonely time before my grandfather went away. Rain reminded him of the early days and the whisper of a warm fire and a late book with tea, everybody there. I changed my mind about rain. You’ve got to have rain and some place to read and talk and keep women and children from ending up out in the cold or on their own. That’s how I figured it. If it had rained more, my grandfather might have been with us, never gotten carried away, and my father would not have been so sad. After that I understood why my mother said, “It’s good, you know. It’s for the crops. It’s good for all of us.” It was the “all of us” she was interested in, probably even more than the crops. In the first months after the war, there had been letters to my father in a woman’s fine flowery hand. They were postmarked from France and made my mother go gray. She knew about the world where people get carried away. And she knew what it was to have a home. They were the two ends of the world for her. Whenever it rained, she took advantage of it and we played games around the fire or had milk tea, or she asked my father to read a story. After I heard about my grandfather, I knew why she did it. Rain can keep a family together.”
"We three boys were sitting on the floor at my dad's feet. He handed each of us a little waxed paper package that contained and inside were sticky, greasy ball bearings. 'They are from a factory near the Ruhr Valley,' he said, 'and they are very nearly perfection. The Germans were very fine craftsmen...You're wondering what these are. Why I brought them home.' We nodded. 'You have to look for beauty, even here, because you forget sometimes. Fine is fine,' he said softly, 'even on the other side.' There were not, that afternoon, guns or bullets or helmets or stories of fighting. There was not talk of Hitler, and for us that chapter was over. He just brought home one small thing that shows that even on the other side there had been people for home quality was important. He never said a word about revenge or forgiveness or what it was like to be in a winning army in the greatest conflict in history. He just brought us ball bearings that were the smoothest and finest in the world, which had not been made by us, and told us to look for beauty where we could."
"Some men sink posts as if they were planting seed: near to the top of the furrow is good enough, or close to the line will hold a horse the same as a dead on the line. But some men don't consider a fence a monument. For my father, anything he did with his hands was a sort of announcement to the world: We are careful here."
"Over the years, mostly the log barn was a place where things were born. Lambs, ducks, and small boys on their way to becoming men."
"But there were some limits in paradise. Nobody ever got tipsy. Getting angry was frowned on, too. Spending too much money on milkshakes and talking when silence would do just as well were discouraged."
"Upstairs, in the room for grades seven through nine, though, there were some girls, even older, who did not play ball or run-around games during recess because they were busy on the steps practicing kissing. I could hardly look at that, although Lavonne, one of those girls, was plenty good-looking and I could see she had a fine future in kissing."
"She was one of those people from the other side of Belleview who had very pretty horses and rode English, which was not a crime really, but it was like people who did not wear Levi's. They were from a whole different world."
"Our teacher, old Miss Post, said that in wheat country thrashing is universal; wheat and people both get it sometime, just without trying. 'Even golden wheat,' she said, 'has to get thrashed, and so do golden people, but you don't have to do it on my watch.' She wanted us to be flexible and to think. But thinking was dangerous, as far as I was concerned."
"There is something fine about the natural order. Sometimes it seems like one bird dies unfairly, remember that your mother knows that, too, and yet her face is always filled with awe. Her world is filled with natural gold."
"If a man can tell what is gold, can fight and be gentle, and can make a square corner, how much more is there?"
"For my dad rain meant the time before the lonely time before my grandfather went away. Rain reminded him of the early days and the whisper of a warm fire and a late book with tea, everybody there. I changed my mind about rain. You’ve got to have rain and some place to read and talk and keep women and children from ending up out in the cold or on their own. That’s how I figured it. If it had rained more, my grandfather might have been with us, never gotten carried away, and my father would not have been so sad. After that I understood why my mother said, “It’s good, you know. It’s for the crops. It’s good for all of us.” It was the “all of us” she was interested in, probably even more than the crops. In the first months after the war, there had been letters to my father in a woman’s fine flowery hand. They were postmarked from France and made my mother go gray. She knew about the world where people get carried away. And she knew what it was to have a home. They were the two ends of the world for her. Whenever it rained, she took advantage of it and we played games around the fire or had milk tea, or she asked my father to read a story. After I heard about my grandfather, I knew why she did it. Rain can keep a family together.”
"We three boys were sitting on the floor at my dad's feet. He handed each of us a little waxed paper package that contained and inside were sticky, greasy ball bearings. 'They are from a factory near the Ruhr Valley,' he said, 'and they are very nearly perfection. The Germans were very fine craftsmen...You're wondering what these are. Why I brought them home.' We nodded. 'You have to look for beauty, even here, because you forget sometimes. Fine is fine,' he said softly, 'even on the other side.' There were not, that afternoon, guns or bullets or helmets or stories of fighting. There was not talk of Hitler, and for us that chapter was over. He just brought home one small thing that shows that even on the other side there had been people for home quality was important. He never said a word about revenge or forgiveness or what it was like to be in a winning army in the greatest conflict in history. He just brought us ball bearings that were the smoothest and finest in the world, which had not been made by us, and told us to look for beauty where we could."
"Some men sink posts as if they were planting seed: near to the top of the furrow is good enough, or close to the line will hold a horse the same as a dead on the line. But some men don't consider a fence a monument. For my father, anything he did with his hands was a sort of announcement to the world: We are careful here."
"Over the years, mostly the log barn was a place where things were born. Lambs, ducks, and small boys on their way to becoming men."
"But there were some limits in paradise. Nobody ever got tipsy. Getting angry was frowned on, too. Spending too much money on milkshakes and talking when silence would do just as well were discouraged."
"Upstairs, in the room for grades seven through nine, though, there were some girls, even older, who did not play ball or run-around games during recess because they were busy on the steps practicing kissing. I could hardly look at that, although Lavonne, one of those girls, was plenty good-looking and I could see she had a fine future in kissing."
"She was one of those people from the other side of Belleview who had very pretty horses and rode English, which was not a crime really, but it was like people who did not wear Levi's. They were from a whole different world."
"Our teacher, old Miss Post, said that in wheat country thrashing is universal; wheat and people both get it sometime, just without trying. 'Even golden wheat,' she said, 'has to get thrashed, and so do golden people, but you don't have to do it on my watch.' She wanted us to be flexible and to think. But thinking was dangerous, as far as I was concerned."
"There is something fine about the natural order. Sometimes it seems like one bird dies unfairly, remember that your mother knows that, too, and yet her face is always filled with awe. Her world is filled with natural gold."
"If a man can tell what is gold, can fight and be gentle, and can make a square corner, how much more is there?"
October 31, 2013
For a few years, between WWII and the Korean War, Craig Barnes and his two brothers lived with their parents on a ranch south of Denver, Colorado. There they learned about life, death and hard work, and how to become men.
Quotes:
There were not, that afternoon, buns or bullets or helmets or stories of fighting. There was no talk about Hitler, and for us that chapter was over. He just brought home one small thing that showed that even on the other side there had been people for whom quality was important. He never said a word about revenge or forgiveness or what it was like to be in a winning army in the greatest conflict in history. He just brought us ball bearings that were the smoothest and finest in the world, which had not been made by us, and told us to look for beauty where we could.
But we knew it wasn't easy getting over being rich; you had to work at it. You had to work at being real.
Our century of wars had produced not only pain but also a man of ultimate decency and civility, of unbending integrity and fairness. It wouldn't be fair, he often said, to see only the evil part of this century, to see the degeneration without seeing how much money middle-class Americans give to charity, and how poor people can get a public education for the first time in history. Or how our children are no longer working in the mines or how the law is now a step above the whims of Kaiser Wilhelm and the kings of England.
Quotes:
There were not, that afternoon, buns or bullets or helmets or stories of fighting. There was no talk about Hitler, and for us that chapter was over. He just brought home one small thing that showed that even on the other side there had been people for whom quality was important. He never said a word about revenge or forgiveness or what it was like to be in a winning army in the greatest conflict in history. He just brought us ball bearings that were the smoothest and finest in the world, which had not been made by us, and told us to look for beauty where we could.
But we knew it wasn't easy getting over being rich; you had to work at it. You had to work at being real.
Our century of wars had produced not only pain but also a man of ultimate decency and civility, of unbending integrity and fairness. It wouldn't be fair, he often said, to see only the evil part of this century, to see the degeneration without seeing how much money middle-class Americans give to charity, and how poor people can get a public education for the first time in history. Or how our children are no longer working in the mines or how the law is now a step above the whims of Kaiser Wilhelm and the kings of England.
July 15, 2012
I LOVED the first half of this book, but it lost steam for me in the end. It begins as a kind of "Stand By Me" boyhood story in Denver and Arapahoe County, CO. The stories he tells are vivid and filled with good humor. The "characters" (his family and friends) are good, kind, interesting people. The relationships between him and his older brothers are delightful. Then time accelerates and he leaves Colorado, and several years of life in Europe are compressed to a few chapters - and completely lose their punch. I had a hard time finishing, which is unusual for me.
March 18, 2016
Interesting memoir that captures compelling elements of mid-twentieth century life on a small ranch near Littleton, Colorado. Notable for the maturity and intelligence of his parents as they raise three boys.
June 3, 2009
book club....we tend to read a Colorado book each season
Wonderful author
Wonderful author
January 5, 2021
lessons about life that come naturally when growing up in the west. A spiritual geography about work, growing and being human.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews