I tell of a time, a place, and a way of life long gone. For many years I have had the urge to describe that treasure trove, lest it vanish forever. So, partly in response to the basic human instinct to share feelings and experiences, and partly for the sheer joy and excitement of it all, I report on my early life. It was quite a romp.

So begins Mildred Kalish’s story of growing up on her grandparents’ Iowa farm during the depths of the Great Depression. With her father banished from the household for mysterious transgressions, five-year-old Mildred and her family could easily have been overwhelmed by the challenge of simply trying to survive. This, however, is not a tale of suffering.

Kalish counts herself among the lucky of that era. She had caring grandparents who possessed—and valiantly tried to impose—all the pioneer virtues of their forebears, teachers who inspired and befriended her, and a barnyard full of animals ready to be tamed and loved. She and her siblings and their cousins from the farm across the way played as hard as they worked, running barefoot through the fields, as free and wild as they dared.

Filled with recipes and how-tos for everything from catching and skinning a rabbit to preparing homemade skin and hair beautifiers, apple cream pie, and the world’s best head cheese (start by scrubbing the head of the pig until it is pink and clean), Little Heathens portrays a world of hardship and hard work tempered by simple rewards. There was the unsurpassed flavor of tender new dandelion greens harvested as soon as the snow melted; the taste of crystal clear marble-sized balls of honey robbed from a bumblebee nest; the sweet smell from the body of a lamb sleeping on sun-warmed grass; and the magical quality of oat shocking under the light of a full harvest moon.

Little Heathens offers a loving but realistic portrait of a “hearty-handshake Methodist” family that gave its members a remarkable legacy of kinship, kindness, and remembered pleasures. Recounted in a luminous narrative filled with tenderness and humor, Kalish’s memoir of her childhood shows how the right stuff can make even the bleakest of times seem like “quite a romp.”

I was born on a farm near Garrison, Iowa, in Benton County on St. Patrick's Day in 1922.

My growing up was influenced by The Great Depression, by the self-reliance and work ethic of my mother's parents- themselves descendants of pioneers- who never quite made it into the 20th Century and by the remarkable challenges and the inestimable rewards of living a rural life where we children were expected to accept responsibilities beyond the ordinary.

From early on, I was eager to be self-supporting and independent.The summer I became thirteen I became the companion , cook and caretaker of a retired missionary; I served as a hired girl on two local farms; I earned an Elementary Teacher's Certificate from Iowa Stte Teacher's College at Cedar Falls.

I accepted the position as Governess in Yonkers, N.Y.

Joining the The United States Coast Guard Women's Reserve, I was sent for Radio Training to Miami University at Oxford, Ohio and on graduation I served at the Headquarters of the 5th Naval District in Norfolk, Virginia where I met and married fellow radio operator Harry Kalish.

Thanks to the G.I. Bill, we both furthered our education at the State University of Iowa.

We have 2 sons, 2 daughters-in-law (par excellence) amd 4 grandchildren.

I am an Emeritus Professor of English retired from Suffolk County Community College on Long Island. I have taught at the State University of Iowa at Iowa City, The State University of Missouri at Columbia, and at Adelphi in Garden City, NY.

My husband and I are residents of a retirement community in Cupertino, California.