Sweet and Sour Pie

A Wisconsin Boyhood

Dave Crehore

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780299230609
• eBook ISBN: 9780299230630

As a young boy, Dave Crehore moved with his parents from northern Ohio to the shipbuilding town of Manitowoc on the shores of Wisconsin's Lake Michigan, where the Germanic inhabitants punctuate their conversations with "enso," the local radio station interrupts Beethoven for commercials, and the outdoors are a wellspring of enlightenment.
    Crehore's stories of his youth in 1950s Wisconsin are peppered with engaging characters and a quiet wit. A grouse-hunting expedition goes awry when an eccentric British businessman bags an escaped bantam rooster with a landing net. Crehore's great-grandfather gets in trouble one Christmas when he sneaks a whoopee-cushion under a guest's seat. The elderly Frau Blau gets trapped in an outhouse by a shady auctioneer during a farm sale. Through all the adventures—and misadventures—in a small town and in the great outdoors of Wisconsin, family is always at the center. This gently humorous look back at a baby-boomer's awakening to adulthood will be appreciated by members of any generation.

 

 

Honorable Mention, Kingery/Derleth Book Length Nonfiction, Council for Wisconsin Writers

Finalist, Humor, Midwest Book Awards

 

 

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Beans for Breakfast
• The Fannie Farmer Mystery
• The Viggle Years
• The Christmas When a Lot Happened
• The Digging Out of Nip
• The Century Run
• Sacrificing Sweet Sixteen
• The Fine Art of Forgetting
• The Secret Smallmouth Lake in the U.P.
• The Butternut Buck
• The Celebrated Water Witch of Door County
• Lucky Thirteen
• How Now, Frau Blau?
• The Dorking Rooster-Catcher
• The Man of Action
• No Fair!
• The Wanderer
• Sweet and Sour Pie
• Envoi
• Glossary