Carroll Engelhardt

The title of Carroll Engelhardt's memoir (THE FARM AT HOLSTEIN DIP), the cover, the photos, the product description - they all sounded so promising to this midwestern small-town boy. But the book itself fell rather flat. It shouldn't have, because the author and I are only a couple years apart in age. He grew up in small midwestern farming town, as did I. And there were many similarities: the work ethic imparted by strict but loving parents, the importance of church and community in his childhood and youth, the books he read, the suspicion and avoidance between the Protestants and Catholics (I was Catholic, Englehardt was Protestant). The farm chores and town pleasures described were the same, as were the various stores, businesses and the neighborhood movie theater. I felt the flashes of recognition in Engelhardt's descriptions of all these things, but something - the punch line, perhaps - was missing. Because, despite Engelhardt's obviously voluminous research - of his own family tree, the town and county history, the tenor of the times in the 40s and 50s - or maybe because of it, his story comes across like a doctoral dissertation: scholarly, dry and utterly devoid of humor. There is a stiffness and formality in the professorial style of the writing that hides the magic, the yearning, the frustration and excitement of a country childhood and teenage years. Here, for example, is how he describes dating -

"Despite societal norms, boys expected necking and even petting on dates and in romantic relationships. Dating promoted sexual exploration in the privacy afforded by automobiles as well as by a sense of obligation in girls fostered by having boys pay. The dating system made women the controllers of sex. By her more virtuous nature and the logic of sexual economy, she must enforce limits, and he must accept them despite his more libidinous nature."

I mean, "HUH?" I just don't think teenage boys, or girls either, in the heat of passion, hunched and splayed on a scratchy back seat, ever really gave much thought to "the logic of sexual economy." This does not read like a memoir. It reads like a sociology textbook.

There were things in here that I did warm to, such as Engelhardt's mention of the Hardy Boys and other boys' books, as well as Classics Illustrated comic books. His descriptions of haying and other farm chores also rang true. What is sadly lacking, however, is any real sense of joy or fun. And I know there must have been such times, because that was the nature of a rural childhood in those decades of the forties and fifties.

In his conclusion (which often reads like a modern publicity brochure for Elkader, his Iowa hometown), Engelhardt trots out his own version of that familiar chestnut, "You can take the boy off the farm and away from the small town yet never remove the lessons and memories he retains from coming of age in these locales." The problem is, there is very little sense of that "coming of age" in this memoir, certainly not like you got in other more engaging country memoirs, like Curtis Harnack's WE HAVE ALL GONE AWAY, or Ronald Jager's EIGHTY ACRES, or Debra Marquart's THE HORIZONTAL WORLD and many others. Perhaps the real problem is the forty-plus years that Carroll Engelhardt has spent in the academic world of research and pedagogy. Because, sadly, the farm boy he once was seems to have disappeared entirely.

THE FARM AT HOLSTEIN DIP, with its many pages of notes and bibliography, will be interesting to sociologists perhaps, but to the casual reader who enjoys a good memoir? Probably not.… (más)