Publication date: August 15, 2000 Retail price: $12.95 Autobiographical humor/trade paperback. Size 6X9. Length 252 pages. ISBN: 0-595-12284-1. On-demand publishing (iUniverse). Available: Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, Borders. Synopsis: "There was one way in and no way out," joked the oldtimers. The South Canadian came down from the Northwest, became the southern boundary of what had very recently been the Seminole Indian Nation, and in a horseshoe just below Konawa was the mysterious and fabled River Bend. That was where I grew up during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression of the 'Thirties. Money was as scarce as a hen's teeth in those days, but that had always been true. There was no running water or indoor plumbing, and luxuries like sugar and lightbread and coffee were almost non-existent. Kids went barefoot all summer and wore hand-me-downs, and Santa Claus could hardly manage a stocking on the mantel at Christmastime. What the Bend didn't have would have filled a Sears & Roebuck catalog.... Photo by Bambi Fertswart.

A Boy's Life in the Dust Bowl You don't miss what you never had Exploring the Willow Bottom Building forts in the Red Clay Canyons The annual hog-slaughter Pie suppers and Easter egg hunts Play parties and square dances Uncle Trigger and Chunch The little red wagon Rubber guns and slingshots Cloverine salve and Grit newspapers

Once upon a time there was a fabulous place known as the River Bend, in Seminole County, Oklahoma. During the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl it was an ideal place for an intergetic boy to grow up, despite the hard times. There were none of the luxuries and accessories that we have come to take for granted today, but there were wild and exciting places like the Willow Bottom and the Red Clay Ditches and the Sand Canyons; and the kid from whose viewpoint these stories and anecdotes were written made the best of them. He was a Tom Sawyer of the West!