BOOK REVIEW: All Company Towns Ain't Bad

This time of year makes most of us nostalgic for the good old days, the days when we were very young and everything in our small world was there for our enjoyment. Jim Davy took me back to that time of my life in his book ALL COMPANY TOWNS AIN'T BAD.

The difference is that Jim grew up in Monument, a brick manufacturing town, and I grew up in nearby Curtin, an iron town. Curtin is located on the Bald Eagle and Monument is a little farther down the road on Beech Creek. Other than that, the book might have been about my childhood.

Jim has had to talk to a lot of people in addition to having a very good memory for this book to be as authentic as it is. His recollections of the old town are clear enough that the people who were his neighbors come alive for us. This was especially true of the workers in the brick factory.

The manufacturing of fire bricks is something that was unfamiliar to me. Thanks to the description and illustrations the reader understands the process well enough to start his own brick company; except, that the descriptions also explain the pure physical labor that was the day to day life of these men.

It is the life that the women lived that must have been the same in all rural communities during the 1930’s and 40’s. Women had to carry water from the community well, heat it, and fill the washer tubs by hand. My husband and daughters laugh at me because I still sort my laundry from lights to darks. Because we used the same water, the less dirty things got washed before the dark work clothes….talk about being “green”.  I can also remember in Curtin households grabbing their coal buckets when a freight train stopped to get water. Thus, nobody ever bought coal.

This small book is full of pictures and illustrations. A lot of research must have gone into being able to identify so many individuals from that long ago. If you lived in the area, you might recognize family members. My only complaint about the book is that many of the pictures are not dated. Some seemed to be older than Jim’s time of living in Monument.

ALL COMPANY TOWNS AIN'T BAD will bring back memories to those of us of a certain age and give a glimpse of life when being green was a matter of existence and a time when neighbors and bosses took care of one another.