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My Family and Other Hazards: A Memoir
A funny, heartwarming memoir about saying goodbye to your childhood home, in this case a quirky, one-of-a-kind, family-run miniature golf course in the woods of Wisconsin
When June Melby was ten years old, her parents decided on a whim to buy the miniature golf course in the small Wisconsin town where they vacationed every summer. Without any business experience or outside employees, the family sets out to open Tom Thumb Miniature Golf to the public. Naturally, there are bumps along the way. In My Family and Other Hazards, Melby recreates all the squabbling, confusion, and ultimately triumph, of one family's quest to build something together, and brings to life the joys of one of America's favorite pastimes. In sharp, funny prose, we get the hazards that taunted players at each hole, and the dedication and hard work that went into each one's creation. All the familiar delights of summer are here—snowcones and popcorn and long days spent with people you love.
Melby's relationship with the course is love-hate from the beginning, given the summer's freedom it robs her of, but when her parents decide to sell the course years later, her panicked reaction surprises even her. Now an adult living in Hollywood, having flown the Midwest long ago, she flies back to the course to help run it before the sale goes through, wondering if she should try to stop it. As the clock ticks, she reflects on what the course meant to her both as a child and an adult, the simpler era that it represents, and the particular pains of losing your childhood home, even years after you've left it.
When June Melby was ten years old, her parents decided on a whim to buy the miniature golf course in the small Wisconsin town where they vacationed every summer. Without any business experience or outside employees, the family sets out to open Tom Thumb Miniature Golf to the public. Naturally, there are bumps along the way. In My Family and Other Hazards, Melby recreates all the squabbling, confusion, and ultimately triumph, of one family's quest to build something together, and brings to life the joys of one of America's favorite pastimes. In sharp, funny prose, we get the hazards that taunted players at each hole, and the dedication and hard work that went into each one's creation. All the familiar delights of summer are here—snowcones and popcorn and long days spent with people you love.
Melby's relationship with the course is love-hate from the beginning, given the summer's freedom it robs her of, but when her parents decide to sell the course years later, her panicked reaction surprises even her. Now an adult living in Hollywood, having flown the Midwest long ago, she flies back to the course to help run it before the sale goes through, wondering if she should try to stop it. As the clock ticks, she reflects on what the course meant to her both as a child and an adult, the simpler era that it represents, and the particular pains of losing your childhood home, even years after you've left it.
300 pages, Hardcover
First published July 8, 2014
11 people are currently reading
860 people want to read
About the author
June Melby
4 books9 followersJune Melby is the author of "My Family and Other Hazards" (Henry Holt, 2014). She has an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in The Utne Reader, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Water~Stone Review, Versal, the LA Weekly, National Lampoon Magazine, and Kaffee.Satz.Lesen, Hamburg, Germany, among others. Awards include Writing Fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts|; and International Artist Award and residency from the City of Hamburg Kulturbehorde (Cultural Affairs Department).
As a performance poet, she has appeared in NYC at Bar 13, CBGB's, The Knitting Factory, and the Nuyorican; festivals including Bumbershoot, Seattle Poetry Festival, and the Las Vegas Arts Festival. Museums include UCLA Hammer Museum and the San Diego Museum of the Living Artist. She has also featured in four tours in Europe including the cities of Edinburgh, London, Munich, The Hague, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Bonn, among others.
She is the voice of the alien "Bang" in the Warner Brothers film Space Jam with Michael Jordan.
She lives in a log cabin with her husband and a 20-pound cat named Ferdinand Magellan.
As a performance poet, she has appeared in NYC at Bar 13, CBGB's, The Knitting Factory, and the Nuyorican; festivals including Bumbershoot, Seattle Poetry Festival, and the Las Vegas Arts Festival. Museums include UCLA Hammer Museum and the San Diego Museum of the Living Artist. She has also featured in four tours in Europe including the cities of Edinburgh, London, Munich, The Hague, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Bonn, among others.
She is the voice of the alien "Bang" in the Warner Brothers film Space Jam with Michael Jordan.
She lives in a log cabin with her husband and a 20-pound cat named Ferdinand Magellan.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews
January 3, 2016
What a funny book. I didn't realize it was a memoir until after I got it home. I was in a hurry and it was a last ditch grab off the shelf as I was passing by to get to the check out counter before the library locked it's doors. I will be honest it didn't read like your run of the mill memoir's. It was hysterical in some moments and crazy the next. Enjoyable, that's the word.
April 14, 2014
I received this book from the Library Thing Early Reviewers, and was excited when it came.
When June Melby was ten, her school teacher parents decided to buy a miniature golf course in Wisconsin, and to spend their summers living there and running it. This is her memory of those years, looking back as her parents prepare to sell it.
I was a little bit put off by the prologue. Something about the tone and the writing almost made me set it aside. Maybe Melby was channeling a bit too much of her stand-up comic persona. Thank goodness, as she started her hole-by-hole walk through the years and the course, the tone changed. She made us feel the love that she had for her family, even as she let us see how annoying a sister could be. She evoked the beauty of the Wisconsin Chain of Lakes, while letting us feel and smell the damp slime of leaves rotting in a water feature, and of dripping paint in the heat. She described each hole, what it looked like, how to play it, and what aspect of life it evoked for her: time, hope, nostalgia. . . . With each hole she explored a little bit more about the life they led at the course and about herself.
This was a very enjoyable memoir, especially for someone who enjoys Americana, the midwest, and family.
When June Melby was ten, her school teacher parents decided to buy a miniature golf course in Wisconsin, and to spend their summers living there and running it. This is her memory of those years, looking back as her parents prepare to sell it.
I was a little bit put off by the prologue. Something about the tone and the writing almost made me set it aside. Maybe Melby was channeling a bit too much of her stand-up comic persona. Thank goodness, as she started her hole-by-hole walk through the years and the course, the tone changed. She made us feel the love that she had for her family, even as she let us see how annoying a sister could be. She evoked the beauty of the Wisconsin Chain of Lakes, while letting us feel and smell the damp slime of leaves rotting in a water feature, and of dripping paint in the heat. She described each hole, what it looked like, how to play it, and what aspect of life it evoked for her: time, hope, nostalgia. . . . With each hole she explored a little bit more about the life they led at the course and about herself.
This was a very enjoyable memoir, especially for someone who enjoys Americana, the midwest, and family.
July 1, 2014
An absolutely wonderful summertime read! I was hooked from the first few pages, where Melby eloquently describes the beauty of Wisconsin, her home during summers. Humor abounds on every page, and I found myself laughing at the antics that Melby and her siblings get into while helping their folks run the miniature golf course that her schoolteacher parents bought when Melby was ten. But this memoir is more than a romp through summertime memories. Melby, now a successful comedienne and writer, writes about what the loss of her family's business means to her when she finds out her parents are selling it. If you enjoy memoirs such as Wild (Cheryl Strayed) or The Wilder Life (Wendy McClure) this is a book for you. Highly recommend!
June 2, 2014
A win from another site.
Great fun read about a family from Iowa who buy a miniature golf course in Wisconsin.
Told with humor and fun. Well written
Great fun read about a family from Iowa who buy a miniature golf course in Wisconsin.
Told with humor and fun. Well written
July 3, 2014
When she was 10 years old, June Melby's schoolteacher parents bought a miniature golf course in Wisconsin. Every year thereafter, the family left their home in Iowa the day school let out and spent the summer operating the slightly down-at-the-heels family attraction. As the book opens, Ms. Melby gets a phone call from her mother, who tells her that after thirty years, they're selling the golf course and retiring. The news sends the author back home to say her final goodbye to the place that defined her life for so many years.
From the title of the book, I thought the story would be about the personalities in her family -- mother, father, three sisters. Her recollections are charming, but her family seems to be a very normal, Midwestern family with few eccentricities or even characteristics that stand out. Instead, the book focuses mainly on the golf course, the running of it and the customers who frequent the place. Each of the eighteen chapters is titled for one of the holes of the course.
Ms. Melby doesn't delve deeply into her feelings about her lot in life. For the most part, she describes what her family's life was like -- the tedious and relentless work of keeping up an outdoor attraction -- instead of how she felt about it. I enjoyed the few times she recounted her own (tiny) rebellions and coming-of-age moments, and I would have appreciated it if, in the writing of the book, she had asked her parents and sisters what they thought of the family venture and identity. Here and there, she hints at what she imagines they might have been thinking. One day, when she and her mother take a swim in a freezing cold lake, her mother insists on making the best of it. "A person can get used to anything," she tells her daughter. Maybe that's the oblique way Midwesterners talk (and write) about their lives.
Toward the end of her book, Ms. Melby talks briefly, but candidly, about her adult life, living in Hollywood, trying to make a go of it as a comedian and actress. I would have liked more of this inward focus; this is a memoir, after all. I never got a good sense of the author. Why did she get a degree in electrical engineering? When did she decide to take a stab at the stage? What is her personal life like? Does she feel like her childhood was enhanced or blighted by the golf course? Everything is just hinted at, but never explored. For instance, it seems that her parents had a very strong Christian faith, but the author doesn't delve into how it colored their lives or whether she wrestled with inheriting the family faith as well as its vocation. Her lack of faith as an adult just is.
Of course, the title of this book reminded me of Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals, an account of the author's eccentric English family who, on a whim similar to the Melby family's, move to the Greek island of Corfu. If it's colorful characters you want, Mr. Durrell's family will more than satisfy you.
From the title of the book, I thought the story would be about the personalities in her family -- mother, father, three sisters. Her recollections are charming, but her family seems to be a very normal, Midwestern family with few eccentricities or even characteristics that stand out. Instead, the book focuses mainly on the golf course, the running of it and the customers who frequent the place. Each of the eighteen chapters is titled for one of the holes of the course.
Ms. Melby doesn't delve deeply into her feelings about her lot in life. For the most part, she describes what her family's life was like -- the tedious and relentless work of keeping up an outdoor attraction -- instead of how she felt about it. I enjoyed the few times she recounted her own (tiny) rebellions and coming-of-age moments, and I would have appreciated it if, in the writing of the book, she had asked her parents and sisters what they thought of the family venture and identity. Here and there, she hints at what she imagines they might have been thinking. One day, when she and her mother take a swim in a freezing cold lake, her mother insists on making the best of it. "A person can get used to anything," she tells her daughter. Maybe that's the oblique way Midwesterners talk (and write) about their lives.
Toward the end of her book, Ms. Melby talks briefly, but candidly, about her adult life, living in Hollywood, trying to make a go of it as a comedian and actress. I would have liked more of this inward focus; this is a memoir, after all. I never got a good sense of the author. Why did she get a degree in electrical engineering? When did she decide to take a stab at the stage? What is her personal life like? Does she feel like her childhood was enhanced or blighted by the golf course? Everything is just hinted at, but never explored. For instance, it seems that her parents had a very strong Christian faith, but the author doesn't delve into how it colored their lives or whether she wrestled with inheriting the family faith as well as its vocation. Her lack of faith as an adult just is.
Of course, the title of this book reminded me of Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals, an account of the author's eccentric English family who, on a whim similar to the Melby family's, move to the Greek island of Corfu. If it's colorful characters you want, Mr. Durrell's family will more than satisfy you.
January 24, 2016
I purchased an autographed copy of this book for my dad just after the author had been in Milwaukee for a signing event. I am sorry I missed! My dad has read the book twice already and has been bugging me to read it. Am I ever glad u finally did. What an excellent memoir! Each hazard/hole on the mini golf course represented a theme of life and her and her fAmily's experiences. I have played Tom Thumb many times. My parents have a cottage on the chain. Our family has vacationed there for years, starting with my grandmothers family in the 1920s. I didn't want this book to end and I cried as I finished it. Even if one does not have a connection to Waupaca, one can't help but feel a part of the Melby family while reading this memoir. I can't wait to get up there this summer to play a round!
May 16, 2014
I love memoir, in part because I occasionally discover a book like this. Nothing horrible happened to Melby; she comes from what could be considered a "happy" family. They just happen to own a mini golf course on a lake in Wisconsin. Her family spent every summer minute taking care of the course and customers, taking care of other families who were actually on vacation. The stories are funny and sweet and made me feel nostalgic for Wisconsin summers, even though the only place I've ever been in Wisconsin is an outlet mall. Read this: it's a lot of fun and will make you start searching for an open mini golf. (Are they still around? I'm going to find out.)
July 19, 2014
My 5-star review is biased. I grew up in the town this memoir takes place in, and played extensively upon this very course she describes. When she writes about a specific area of the course, or of Waupaca, I smile involuntarily;she is writing about something that I remember in vivid detail. But if you are the exact opposite of me, someone who has never been to central Wisconsin, or never knew the thrill of spending a summer afternoon on a mini golf course, I believe you will still enjoy this book.
May 4, 2014
A delightful memoir of growing up on a mini-golf course. The author relates each hole and hazard to a life lesson. A good read about family, relationships, and lessons learned along the way to adulthood. A thoroughly enjoyable book!
May 30, 2014
A wonderful book about childhood, in this case, the family operated a miniature golf course in Wisconsin. I really enjoyed reading this. Made me remember my childhood at times. Won this book from goodreads.
May 24, 2014
This was fun to read, and a sweet, nostalgic story. And now I want to play mini-golf.
March 9, 2018
I finished this book in 2 Days! It’s a thrill anytime you can read a book about the places you lived and have been to. I was born in Waupaca and lived just down the road from a big tourist attraction approximately 5+ miles away from the Tom Thumb mini golf course. I lived near The Old Red Mill until about the 2nd grade when my parents moved us away. I will always consider Waupaca,Wi my hometown. It’s a beautiful area and the Chain O’Lakes is a huge tourist destination every summer. In fact I used to tag along with my Mom as a child while she cleaned summer cottages on the various lakes. This book brings back so many childhood summer memories, in fact I played mini golf various times thru my teen years at this very place. I remember Fort Waupaca, the little western village replica the Author’s uncle operated during the summer. The village is still standing but vacant and in disrepair for many years now. I had to smile when she mentions area towns and laugh when her Father tells a customer that they go to Ogdensburg for vacations....lol, there is nothing in Ogdensburg but 2 taverns and a Church, population about 500? The author describes spending every summer working at the mini golf course, the work load, long summer days and the tourists. I don’t envy her dealing with the tourists as I know how rude, arrogant and demanding they can be. My Dad used the phrase “ damn tourists” so much that it was probably my first sentence as a toddler. You can pull into any grocery store,gas station or gift shop in Waupaca today and know instantly who the tourists are! As much as the Author seemed to dislike the place growing up, she was the most emotional when it was sold off. This was a really good sentimental read!
October 16, 2018
Not hilarious, but humorous; waxes poetic, but not overly sentimental; detailed but not bogged down (actually, it could have used more pictures--specifically, as mentioned in the text, the ones taken by a professional photographer who came to admire their course).
This was a fun read to which I related heavily, since I work at an amusement park that boasts a full 18-hole mini golf course (ours took over the space formerly occupied by an indoor saltwater pool many decades ago...but, I digress). We don't have a windmill, but we do have hazards to maintain--fortunately that is someone else's job!
I loved the natural arc of progression through the holes and corresponding themes in life; I was able to relate to all the cultural references and learned a bit about the history of the game and amusement in general. Like all good things, mini golf games (and this book) come to an end; I already miss reading about the expectations, time, despair, complexity, history, laws of nature, water, dreams, the others, weird things we do together, escape, rules, joy, path-finding, play, bewilderment, nostalgia, and redemption.
Onward, to the Snack Shack for some wholesome treats.
This was a fun read to which I related heavily, since I work at an amusement park that boasts a full 18-hole mini golf course (ours took over the space formerly occupied by an indoor saltwater pool many decades ago...but, I digress). We don't have a windmill, but we do have hazards to maintain--fortunately that is someone else's job!
I loved the natural arc of progression through the holes and corresponding themes in life; I was able to relate to all the cultural references and learned a bit about the history of the game and amusement in general. Like all good things, mini golf games (and this book) come to an end; I already miss reading about the expectations, time, despair, complexity, history, laws of nature, water, dreams, the others, weird things we do together, escape, rules, joy, path-finding, play, bewilderment, nostalgia, and redemption.
Onward, to the Snack Shack for some wholesome treats.
June 27, 2021
Full disclosure: I know the author. We met when we were both in the SoCal poetry scene in the late 90s/early 2000s. But I really didn't know that much about her other than she was a great poet and very funny and extremely nice. This book helps fill in the other spaces, and I was seriously charmed. When she was ten years old, her parents bought a miniature golf course in Wisconsin and every summer, they would drive there from Iowa to run it and live there. This memoir is beautifully written and just the right level of nostalgic, sentimental, and quite full of love. I loved how the book had a chapter for each of the course's 18 holes and the way she used each hole's hazard as a metaphor. I found myself looking forward to what each one would be about and then how the chapter would flesh it out. I'm so glad I reconnected with June after a number of years to buy her book and get to know her a bit better. It's a perfect summer read about beginnings and endings and what happens in between, before, and after.
May 17, 2018
I'm not going to lie. The only reason I picked up this book was the mini-golf. And I was not disappointed. It's actually a very nice memoir about trying to come to terms with your adult life not being as great as you thought it would be. The fact that her regret is represented by the family's mini-golf course is kind of awesome. A very enjoyable read, though I wish there had been pictures throughout.
October 29, 2017
A sweet and nostalgic memoir of the family-owned Tom Thumb miniature golf course in Central Wisconsin. The author whose parents took on the business with little experience, describes each hole with a theme of what each summer together running this tourist attraction meant to her and her family. I enjoyed her trip down memory lane.
July 24, 2022
Anyone who has spent summers at a northern lake will find themselves somewhere in these pages. My first job was at my aunt and uncle's mini golf course when I was fourteen. The book eas like coming home.
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July 12, 2025Author tells stories and reflects her summer running Tom Thumb mini golf course summers in Waupaca since her family bought the course when she was ten. Each chapter (18) describes a different hole on the course. has a lot of interesting personal stories. 5*if you know Waupaca, 4* if you don't
July 29, 2025
I enjoyed reading about mini golf and her upbringing but I would call it wistful and mildly humorous at best. Considering that she was a professional comedian and blurbs on the back referred to the book as wildly funny and deeply funny, I was expecting it to be, y'know, funnier, but whatever.
November 11, 2017
Great read for when you want to muse about summer vacations, negotiating family, and trying to figure out when/how/why to grow up
June 27, 2018
3.5 stars // An enjoyable read for summer.
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June 12, 2021A sentimental Waupaca in the summer book.
February 27, 2017
I was trying to figure out why it was taking me so long to read this book - when I realized it was because in the same way we hang on to summer, I didn't want it to end! (Plus each chapter is pretty self-contained.)
Thank you, June Melby, for transporting me to a simpler time, a before-cell phone time with gravel parking lots. Thank you for the memories and the laughs. I don't know if we met, but I did mini-golf at Tom Thumb near Waupaca in the late 60s, early 70s on the way to or from Camp Tamarack. I remember the hazards, Dings Dock, Beasley Creek, hitting the cold spots when lake swimming - because you repainted them for me.
My Family and other Hazards is warm and witty, full of Fun details about mini-golf and being a tween in the late 60s. (I think being a tween is in itself a hazard.) It is about growing up, wanting things to change very much and not wanting them to change at all. Nostalgia wrapped me like a dry towel on a windy summer morning.
I love how each chapter represented a hazard on the mini-golf course and a philosophical slice of life. I remember rainbow colored golf balls and pink cotton candy, carpeted green greens and most of all - LOVING, FUN family time. Thank you to you and your family for keeping prices low and making that possible. Thank you for summer memories during a Minnesota winter. God bless.
Thank you, June Melby, for transporting me to a simpler time, a before-cell phone time with gravel parking lots. Thank you for the memories and the laughs. I don't know if we met, but I did mini-golf at Tom Thumb near Waupaca in the late 60s, early 70s on the way to or from Camp Tamarack. I remember the hazards, Dings Dock, Beasley Creek, hitting the cold spots when lake swimming - because you repainted them for me.
My Family and other Hazards is warm and witty, full of Fun details about mini-golf and being a tween in the late 60s. (I think being a tween is in itself a hazard.) It is about growing up, wanting things to change very much and not wanting them to change at all. Nostalgia wrapped me like a dry towel on a windy summer morning.
I love how each chapter represented a hazard on the mini-golf course and a philosophical slice of life. I remember rainbow colored golf balls and pink cotton candy, carpeted green greens and most of all - LOVING, FUN family time. Thank you to you and your family for keeping prices low and making that possible. Thank you for summer memories during a Minnesota winter. God bless.
January 30, 2015
Yes, June Melby did steal the title from Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals (another book everyone should read, ASAP)—she says so in the acknowledgments. And just like My Family and Other Animals, her memoir is charming, funny, and deeply good-hearted. Except for that Durrell grew up on Cyprus with his infinitely patient mother and every imaginable form of flora and fauna and his idiosyncratic older siblings (a poet, a hunter, and a bikini-clad drama queen), and June Melby grew up on a "Tom Thumb" miniature golf course in Wisconsin, with her infinitely patient mother, bossy older sister, and waif-like younger sister. And 18 hazards, all of which the family painstakingly maintained, and countless putters, and golf balls of every color, and a cotton candy machine. And then she grew up, went to college to study engineering, and from there to LA to become a stand-up comedian (like you do). And then, at age 40, while not-so-successfully living in Los Angeles, she returns to Wisconsin to help her parents pack after they sell the golf course, after 30+ years of running it. And then she's overcome by nostalgia. And re-evaluates her life. And decides to stay in the Midwest and goes to graduate school and becomes a spoken-word poet.
These things seem like they have little in common, but trust me, they do. Melby is lyrical and irreverent and keen-eyed and has a poet's gift for a finely turned phrase and a comedian's gift for a punchline timed exactly right. She also knows from literary devices—allegory, metaphor, simile—and so each hazard on the course is not just a windmill or a rocket or a bridge. It stands for Something Else. Hole #10, The Outhouse, is "about Family (the extended kind) and The Weird Things We Do Together." Hole #12, The Barrels, is about Rules. Hole #2, The One With The Hill in the Middle, is about Despair. But it's not just golf-course-as-metaphor: there's history (the Melby family history and the evolving relationship between the Melby sisters as they help (or avoid helping) run the course, the history of miniature golf in the US (far more fascinating than one would imagine!) and the cultural history of summer pastimes in Wisconsin), there's sharp social observation ("The purpose of summer vacation is to eat bad food and argue with your family"), and there's food science (you will learn exactly the right way to make cotton candy, and things about popcorn that may have you popping your own popcorn from here on out, thank you very much).
The word "wholesome" gets a bad rap these days, but I really don't know how else to describe this book. Not "wholesome" in that ruddy-cheeked, aw-shucks kind of way, but wholesome because it's open-hearted and kind and generous and funny and—well, just whole. Like there's nothing missing. Like Melby herself, it comes around in a perfect circle. Here's where a lesser person might try to insert a joke about a hole-in-one, but I will not be going there.
These things seem like they have little in common, but trust me, they do. Melby is lyrical and irreverent and keen-eyed and has a poet's gift for a finely turned phrase and a comedian's gift for a punchline timed exactly right. She also knows from literary devices—allegory, metaphor, simile—and so each hazard on the course is not just a windmill or a rocket or a bridge. It stands for Something Else. Hole #10, The Outhouse, is "about Family (the extended kind) and The Weird Things We Do Together." Hole #12, The Barrels, is about Rules. Hole #2, The One With The Hill in the Middle, is about Despair. But it's not just golf-course-as-metaphor: there's history (the Melby family history and the evolving relationship between the Melby sisters as they help (or avoid helping) run the course, the history of miniature golf in the US (far more fascinating than one would imagine!) and the cultural history of summer pastimes in Wisconsin), there's sharp social observation ("The purpose of summer vacation is to eat bad food and argue with your family"), and there's food science (you will learn exactly the right way to make cotton candy, and things about popcorn that may have you popping your own popcorn from here on out, thank you very much).
The word "wholesome" gets a bad rap these days, but I really don't know how else to describe this book. Not "wholesome" in that ruddy-cheeked, aw-shucks kind of way, but wholesome because it's open-hearted and kind and generous and funny and—well, just whole. Like there's nothing missing. Like Melby herself, it comes around in a perfect circle. Here's where a lesser person might try to insert a joke about a hole-in-one, but I will not be going there.
April 12, 2014
My Family and Other Hazards by June Mebley is tedious. I was a little reluctant to pick it out for fear that it would be but I love memoirs. The author has a chapter for each hole in the Tom Thumb miniature golf course.
When the author was 10 years old, she and her two sisters were packed into the family vehicle along with her parents and drove from Iowa to Wisconsin. Her parents were both schoolteachers and this was a way of earning money through the summer. They did that every summer thereafter. Well the kids grew up and the parents still had it. The parents decided to sell it due to the high amount of work that had to be put into its upkeep and the fact that the precipitous climb of the property taxes. The author and her siblings all had a love/hate relationship with Tom Thumb. She had to see it once more before it was sold. Her book is a detailed recitation of each hole on the golf course. She told how difficult it was to get the ball into each and every hole. She told the family stories which included the nicknames for the hole and all the adventures that were connected to each hole.
What I like the most was when the author got away from Tom Thumb. Her family seemed to love of its members. They had a sense of humor throughout the book. I think it was desperately needed.
What I didn’t like was that it was easy to picture how horrible every summer would be with this family. Driving five hours each summer after the day school, doing heavy cleaning of the paths between each hole, cleaning out the leaves and dirt in each and every hole. I got tired of the peanut butter sandwiches and the pushy people trying to get in before the miniature golf course was ready. I got tired of reading about making snow cones and cotton candy. I did feel badly for the author and her siblings. My childhood was much better. We had a group of kids to play with, we walked over to the movies. We splashed in the mud puddles, we sat on the swing together and read book after book. When I was older, we even took vacations. I ended up feeling sorry for these kids.
This book was not for me. It may be for people who own miniature golf courses, I am not sure.
I received this book from LibraryThing but that in now influenced my thoughts or feelings in this book.
When the author was 10 years old, she and her two sisters were packed into the family vehicle along with her parents and drove from Iowa to Wisconsin. Her parents were both schoolteachers and this was a way of earning money through the summer. They did that every summer thereafter. Well the kids grew up and the parents still had it. The parents decided to sell it due to the high amount of work that had to be put into its upkeep and the fact that the precipitous climb of the property taxes. The author and her siblings all had a love/hate relationship with Tom Thumb. She had to see it once more before it was sold. Her book is a detailed recitation of each hole on the golf course. She told how difficult it was to get the ball into each and every hole. She told the family stories which included the nicknames for the hole and all the adventures that were connected to each hole.
What I like the most was when the author got away from Tom Thumb. Her family seemed to love of its members. They had a sense of humor throughout the book. I think it was desperately needed.
What I didn’t like was that it was easy to picture how horrible every summer would be with this family. Driving five hours each summer after the day school, doing heavy cleaning of the paths between each hole, cleaning out the leaves and dirt in each and every hole. I got tired of the peanut butter sandwiches and the pushy people trying to get in before the miniature golf course was ready. I got tired of reading about making snow cones and cotton candy. I did feel badly for the author and her siblings. My childhood was much better. We had a group of kids to play with, we walked over to the movies. We splashed in the mud puddles, we sat on the swing together and read book after book. When I was older, we even took vacations. I ended up feeling sorry for these kids.
This book was not for me. It may be for people who own miniature golf courses, I am not sure.
I received this book from LibraryThing but that in now influenced my thoughts or feelings in this book.
June 10, 2015
This had touches of greatness. The structure was really smart, and the story was so touching. It had that somehow perfect mix of quirky and Everyman that I really love. However, it did have some issues. First, like many other almost-great memoirs before it, it was too meandering. It seemed like there were all these little snippets she had on notecards that she really wanted to fit it, and so they were tucked where they best made sense, but sometimes lacked good transitions or really any ties to what was around them. Also, the author shifted between too many styles of narrative (enhancing the notecard-effect). Some of them were brilliant, evocative, and created a lot of empathy in me. Others left me cold and unimpressed--those sections sounded almost like she'd grabbed bits of her stand-up routines and stuck them, word-for-word, in her book. I think comedians are great when they speak, and writers are great when they write. When a comedian writes, they need to really commit to writing, not just like getting down what they would have said out loud. Also, the structure, which again, I really liked, set the chapters up to be about something, and this was tied to what the same-numbered hazard on the course was about. This was brilliant, but sometimes there wasn't much link to the big 'about'/hazard and what was found in the chapter. In one chapter, literally nothing followed the pronouncement of what the hazard was about. It was a wasted opportunity, because the idea was so good.
The last three chapters, despite the aforementioned weaknesses popping up throughout, were very moving and I couldn't put the book down. I desperately wanted to know if she'd somehow saved her mini-golf course and how it all turned out. I wish she'd taken a little more time working through her voice and her structure so this became more of a 'writer's' book. Without those elements of the comedian books that are trendy right now (Bossypants, Yes Please, etc), this could have been a five star book.
The last three chapters, despite the aforementioned weaknesses popping up throughout, were very moving and I couldn't put the book down. I desperately wanted to know if she'd somehow saved her mini-golf course and how it all turned out. I wish she'd taken a little more time working through her voice and her structure so this became more of a 'writer's' book. Without those elements of the comedian books that are trendy right now (Bossypants, Yes Please, etc), this could have been a five star book.
July 25, 2018
Was really looking forward to reading this from the reviews. Quirky characters, some life lessons, stories about a tourist attraction in central WI. It sounded like something I would really enjoy. And I did enjoy it - just not as much as I thought I would. Especially the last 1/2 of the book had fewer stories, more introspection, not as fun reading. Numerous sentences I quoted to whomever was in the room with me though.
Summer 2018 update: My family is vacationing in Waupaca this summer, so I read this again. According to Waupaca Chamber, Tom Thumb is still in business and I hope to play there during our vacation. Reading the book again, I really like how Melby discusses local history, the history of Tom Thumb, and her memories of growing up there. But I like that sort of thing :-) I also like how she tries to make each hazard a metaphor for an aspect of life. I don't think the stories she tells always necessarily relate to the metaphor of that chapter, and she runs out of stories during the last few chapters, but I still like the book and I did quote numerous sentences again.
Summer 2018 update: My family is vacationing in Waupaca this summer, so I read this again. According to Waupaca Chamber, Tom Thumb is still in business and I hope to play there during our vacation. Reading the book again, I really like how Melby discusses local history, the history of Tom Thumb, and her memories of growing up there. But I like that sort of thing :-) I also like how she tries to make each hazard a metaphor for an aspect of life. I don't think the stories she tells always necessarily relate to the metaphor of that chapter, and she runs out of stories during the last few chapters, but I still like the book and I did quote numerous sentences again.
January 7, 2017
The title of this book suggests that it is going to be the memoir of a dysfunctional family. A "hazardous" family. But in fact, the hazards are confined to the mini golf course where the author and her family spent summers during her childhood, and this book describes probably the most functional family I've ever heard of. Each chapter (there are 18) identifies a quality or a philosophy, almost, about one of the holes on the course and its corresponding hazard (the thing, usually a structure, that makes it difficult), and then tells the story of a particular summer or situation that parallels the philosophy of the hole. It is a comforting and solid story structure that is not unlike the family itself. The entire narrative builds toward the time when the golf course, and therefore the author's childhood home, is to be sold, an event which causes her to reflect on her own life choices, including the failings that she feels prevented her from "saving" the golf course. And as a reader I found myself feeling very sad and wistful about the end of Tom Thumb mini golf, wishing I could have visited when I was in Wisconsin as a kid.
July 30, 2014
A trip back in time, for those of us who remember the good old days of summer. June Melby is a bit younger than we were, but she writes an engaging, funny, bittersweet story of her family's summer business - a Tom Thumb miniature golf business in upper Wisconsin.
June begins with the announcement that her parents have sold the business and are moving. She then tells the story of how they decided to buy the business and all the memories, fun, disappointments, and growing up stories.
The story is told in 18 chapters, yes, one for each hole on the course. And each has a theme - like family, luck, dreams, making choices, etc.
Fun little side notes on popcorn, cotton candy, snow cones. Secrets to how they are made.
I loved her style, as if she is talking directly to you - the reader. June used to be a stand-up comic and she knows how to deliver a line.
I laughed, I cried, I was so sad when the book - and the business - were done.
June begins with the announcement that her parents have sold the business and are moving. She then tells the story of how they decided to buy the business and all the memories, fun, disappointments, and growing up stories.
The story is told in 18 chapters, yes, one for each hole on the course. And each has a theme - like family, luck, dreams, making choices, etc.
Fun little side notes on popcorn, cotton candy, snow cones. Secrets to how they are made.
I loved her style, as if she is talking directly to you - the reader. June used to be a stand-up comic and she knows how to deliver a line.
I laughed, I cried, I was so sad when the book - and the business - were done.
December 31, 2015
I thought this was a great book! It was fun reading about the adventures of the author and her family, once they bought this golf course. I thought it was a good example of how children, and grown ups too, don't always understand all of the effects of a decision. So while initially all the children were excited to buy the golf course, they didn't realize that their entire summer would be spent working there and many weekends during the off season as well, for upkeep. I liked reading about the trade off, between time with friends over the summer and the adventures of working at the mini golf course, which included delicious snow cones and having a nice, clean lake to swim in any time they wanted.
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