Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
The lasting impression left by From Mud Pies and Lilac Leaves, by former Akron resident Bill Shrout, is its sweetness.
The author has set to paper his memories, which fetch back to toddlerhood, about the days when pennies were dear, when trips to the three-holer out back were commonplace and water had to be pumped with the aid of a gasoline engine.
Born during the Depression to an Indiana sharecropper's family, the youngest of seven children, Shrout, 71, tells more than 100 short and simple tales about his youth from a boy's innocent point of view.
He writes admiringly of his hard-working parents, telling of dad's long days in the field and mother's management of the egg money to meet the household's needs.
He tells of chores done without complaint and the ability to make a basketball out of an old Shell oil can.
The best-tasting water was pumped by windmills. The Shrout home, the old Shewman farm 2-1/2 miles east of Akron in Fulton County, springs to life with detailed descriptions of farm tasks, most done by hand and with a team of horses, from butchering hogs to burying apples in an earthen pit in the orchard. Egg-gathering, harvesting and hours in the milk house come to life through Shrout's attention to detail.
Like many farm boys, he hired out around age 12 to farming neighbors earning a quarter a day. The appeal of one hot and scratchy hay-gathering job was the lemonade available at each return to the barn. That same lemon squeezer was purchased at an estate sale and is held among Shrout's most prized possessions.
The young Bill had an imagination, which encompassed playing entire nine inning games single handed against the Chicago Cubs.
Commerce - the selling of mud pies - was accomplished with lilac leaf dollar bills and pebble coin.
The self-reliant Shrout family made due with what they had.
It's no surprise, therefore, Shrout is publishing and promoting From Mud Pies and Lilac Leaves himself.
On Monday Shrout appears at Reader's World, 112 North Buffalo Street, Warsaw, for a book-signing from 3 to 6 p.m.
