Hugh Hawkins was seven years old when his father's job with the Rock Island Rail-road forced his family to relocate to far western Kansas. Before he turned twelve the family had lived in three "Rock Island towns": Herington, Kansas, Goodland, Kansas, and finally EI Reno, Oklahoma. Such was the life of a railwayman's son during the Great Depression. In this warm and thoughtful memoir, Hawkins paints a portrait of a middle-class family's traditions and values in the heartland of the 1930s and 1940s.