Sketches of a Small Town - Circa 1940: A memoir
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Narrated by:
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Clifton K. Meador Sr.
About this listen
For a boy coming of age during the 1930s and '40s, Greenville, Alabama, a small cotton-farming town in the Deep South, was a wonderfully rich environment. Greenville may have been small, but for author Clifton K. Meador, MD, life growing up there was anything but dull. In his memoir Sketches of a Small Town: Circa 1940, Meador lovingly retells the stories that formed his values and shaped his life. For young Clifton and his friends, there was plenty of trouble to stir up, ranging from a field fire, to buzzard hunting, to fights between the country boys and the city boys and of course, girls. There are also poignant moments, such as the loss of his best friend because of the impenetrable wall of segregation. And there are quirky characters: the town's sole, somewhat frightening taxi driver; the intriguing, cross-dressing homosexual; and the eccentric agronomy professor turned failed farmer. Sketches of a Small Town: Circa 1940 not only tells one man's story, but also beautifully captures the remarkable people, places, and events that characterized a unique lifestyle in a bygone era.
©2014 Clifton K. Meador, Sr. (P)2014 Cliton K. Meador, Sr.Listeners also enjoyed...
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- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Colin Broderick was born in 1968 and spent his childhood in Tyrone County in Northern Ireland. It was the beginning of the period of heightened tension and violence known as the Troubles, and Colin’s Catholic family lived in the heart of rebel country. The community was filled with Provisional IRA members, whose lives depended on the silence and complicity of their neighbors. But even when Colin does ask his parents about these events, he never receives a clear explanation. Desperate to protect her children, Colin’s mother tries to prevent exposure to or knowledge of the harm that surrounds them.
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Well Written and Very Personal Memoir
- By Lulu on 01-08-16
By: Colin Broderick
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Finding Fish
- A Memoir
- By: Antwone Q. Fisher
- Narrated by: Thomas Penny
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Baby Boy Fisher was raised in institutions from the moment of his birth in prison to a single mother. He ultimately came to live with a foster family, where he endured near-constant verbal and physical abuse. In his midteens he escaped and enlisted in the navy, where he became a man of the world, raised by the family he created for himself. Finding Fish shows how, out of this unlikely mix of deprivation and hope, an artist was born.
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This book will not disappoint you.
- By Joseph on 10-16-16
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Too Close to the Falls
- A Memoir
- By: Catherine Gildiner
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Welcome to the childhood of Catherine McClure Gildiner. It is the middle of the 1950s in Lewiston, New York, a small and sleepy American town very near Niagara Falls. No one is divorced. Mothers wear high heels to the beauty salon and children pop Pez candy and swing from vines over a local gorge. But at the tender age of four, it becomes clear to her Cathy's parents that their rambunctious daughter is no ordinary child and they soon put her "to work" at her father's pharmacy.
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Brilliant and funny and touching.
- By Kindle Customer on 11-07-19
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The Boy Kings of Texas
- A Memoir
- By: Domingo Martinez
- Narrated by: Emilio Delgado
- Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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A lyrical and authentic book that recounts the story of a border-town family in Brownsville, Texas in the 1980s, as each member of the family desperately tries to assimilate and escape life on the border to become "real" Americans, even at the expense of their shared family history. This is really un-mined territory in the memoir genre that gives in-depth insight into a previously unexplored corner of America.
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It was Okay
- By DebKoo on 05-17-13
By: Domingo Martinez
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The Cost of These Dreams
- Sports Stories and Other Serious Business
- By: Wright Thompson
- Narrated by: Wright Thompson
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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There is only one Wright Thompson. He is, as they say, famous if you know who he is: his work includes the most-read articles in the history of ESPN (and it's not even close) and has been anthologized in the Best American Sports Writing series ten times, and he counts John Grisham and Richard Ford among his ardent admirers. But to say his pieces are about sports, while true as far as it goes, is like saying Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove is a book about a cattle drive.
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Just great
- By ACK on 06-02-19
By: Wright Thompson
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Confederates in the Attic
- Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War
- By: Tony Horwitz
- Narrated by: Arthur Addison
- Length: 15 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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When prize-winning war correspondent Tony Horwitz leaves the battlefields of Bosnia and the Middle East for a peaceful corner of the Blue Ridge Mountains, he thinks he's put war zones behind him. But awakened one morning by the crackle of musket fire, Horwitz starts filing front-line dispatches again this time from a war close to home, and to his own heart.
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A Must Read for Civil War Buffs!
- By Ms Winston on 12-06-14
By: Tony Horwitz
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Twelve Mighty Orphans
- The Inspiring True Story of the Mighty Mites Who Ruled Texas Football
- By: Jim Dent
- Narrated by: Barry Abrams
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 1930s and 1940s, there was nothing bigger in Texas high school football than the Masonic Home Mighty Mites - a group of orphans bound together by hardship and death. These youngsters, in spite of being outweighed by at least 30 pounds per man, were the toughest football team around. They began with nothing - not even a football - yet in a few years were playing for the state championship on the highest level of Texas football. This is a winning tribute to a courageous band of underdogs from a time when America desperately needed fresh hope and big dreams.
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Great story!!
- By Damian McKeon on 06-14-21
By: Jim Dent
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Go Set a Watchman
- A Novel
- By: Harper Lee
- Narrated by: Reese Witherspoon
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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An historic literary event: the publication of a newly discovered novel, the earliest known work from Harper Lee, the beloved, best-selling author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic To Kill a Mockingbird. Originally written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman was the novel Harper Lee first submitted to her publishers before To Kill a Mockingbird. Assumed to have been lost, the manuscript was discovered in late 2014.
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To Kill A Mockingbird vs Go Set A Watchman
- By Sara on 07-15-15
By: Harper Lee
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Love and Other Ways of Dying
- Essays
- By: Michael Paterniti
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 17 wide-ranging essays collected for the first time in Love and Other Ways of Dying, he brings his full literary powers to bear, pondering happiness and grief, memory and the redemptive power of human connection. In the remote Ukranian countryside, Paterniti picks apples (and faces mortality) with a real-life giant; in Nanjing, China, he confronts a distraught jumper on a suicide bridge.
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Incredibly intimate voice for humanity
- By Ed Hodges on 01-02-16
What listeners say about Sketches of a Small Town - Circa 1940: A memoir
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Oscar
- 03-14-15
Wonderful stories
What made the experience of listening to Sketches of a Small Town - Circa 1940: A memoir the most enjoyable?
I had already read the first part of the book. I thought it was great. The stories reminded me so much of my own childhood in small-town Tennessee. Then disaster struck. I lost my eyesight. I could see to walk about, but not to read. I knew my eyesight was at risk. I have had diabetes for 40 years and never took care to regulate my blood sugar. That would not happen today. Reading had been my passion and now all seemed lost.
Then I found Audiobooks. It has transformed my life. The first book I downloaded (I had to get help from my grand daughter) was Sketches of a Small Town by Clifton K Meador, MD. I could sit in my recliner and continue with the stories I loved so much. Thank you Dr. Meador and thank you Audiobooks.
What did you like best about this story?
The casual style.
Which character – as performed by Clifton K. Meador, Sr. – was your favorite?
There are many characters. I liked them all, especially Roosevelt in Chapter 27.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
Both. Some chapters are amusing and some are sad. The book is a realistic description of life in a small southern town in the 1940's.
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- Mark M Barrett
- 06-18-19
absolutely Captivating
it was so much like the life I lived as a Catholic in a town of 267 people in Iowa in the 1950s
Clifton is without reservation the the Will Roger's of the 21st century
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