Two more reads

Growing Up With Clemente by Richard Peterson. Published by Kent State University Press.
I am not a baseball fan but growing up in PA I was a fan of the Pirates; we went to games occasionally and back then they were not the best team in the league. But when they won the pennant that was a big deal. And everyone knows Roberto Clemente! I had this book with me at the Legion's Blood drive in April and the nurse taking my blood commented, "oh Clemente! Are you a baseball fan?" To which I replied, "no but this book is a memoir of a time and place in Pittsburgh, PA." I was surprised the young man knew Roberto Clemente!

Last year, I read an articles by Richard Peterson in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, nostalgia about the days of 'yore in Da' Burgh! I wrote a follow up letter of my own memories of growing up there and what I try to hold onto. This is a memoir of his boyhood in the south Side of Pittsburgh in the late 50's; then his journey as a gas station boy at Hoders; a big time move up to stock boy at Gimbels Department store; and finally his realization that he would need education. Where he ends up is professor emeritus of English at southern Illinois University. Though New Kensington, PA is outside of 'da Burgh, there are some similarities to the times of the steel mills, the industrial waste, and the ethnic communities. I especially enjoyed his reference to his mother who always wanted him to come back home to Pittsburgh to live; he never did.

Some descriptions of his sandlot days were not really interesting reading to me. But I did enjoy the book over all and recommend it to my PA friends, especially the guys. He tells how he read in literature how one can't go home again but how his father's death brought him an emotional shock that made him realize what he'd left behind. I can relate to what he felt when he did return to Pittsburgh to visit. He quotes Norman Mailer, "To return to an old neighborhood and discover that it has disappeared is a minor woe for some but it is close to a physical catastrophe for others.." So because I share with Peterson fond memories of a better time in the good old days of thriving New Kensington, I enjoyed his memoir.

"The Truth about Hillary" by Edward Klein. I read this last year and did not get it posted to my reads on this blog. This trip to PA I found it still stored under the bed, in our motor home, so I retrieved it and include it here. Well I found this interesting about Hillary Clinton and yet I did not learn anything really new about her. This was something I thought I'd read during the campaigns. Just in case she made it and we know now she did not. A comical passage is the young Hillary about 11years old who punches a boy in the nose and flattens him. Does this mean I have a wild streak? I don't know I just laughed. The author uses that as an early example of how she will not take anything from anyone. This book includes many stories of her as a real bully, cheat and manipulator. Later with Bill's philanderings I wonder if she ever tried to bloody his nose? This book as many others shows that Hillary is usually right in the midst calling the shots and not an innocent blind sided person. The book also speaks repeatedly of her cursing and very less than lady like language. Again not a surprise to anyone who has paid any attention to the Clintons. It is a mystery to me that the Obama camp bested her and Bill last election. This is an interesting take on Hillary. Not a book I'll keep on my shelf even though it was a first edition.