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by Philip Gulley (Author)
In the vein of Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, with a dash of some of the homegrown nostalgia of The Dangerous Book for Boys and A Prairie Home Companion, humorist Philip Gulley (Front Porch Tales, Home to Harmony) tells of his coming of age in small-town Indiana.
What happens when your childhood is one of unrelieved and happy chaos?
- Coming of Age: Navigate a sixth-grade crush on the unforgettable Miss Huddleston, disastrous family camping trips, and the legendary Blizzard of '78.
- Small Town Life: Explore Danville, Indiana--a town with a mouse factory, a haunted railroad bridge, and a police dog that only responds to German.
- Childhood Adventures: Join in on dubious schemes, from an epic (and failed) Halloween candy marathon to launching tomato "grenades" from a Laundromat roof.
- 1970s Nostalgia: A world of Schwinn ten-speeds, questionable government jobs picking up dead fish, and trying to figure out girls during a showing of Battle for the Planet of the Apes.
Back Jacket
With his ear for the small town and his knack for finding the needle of humor in life's haystack, Philip Gulley might well be Indiana's answer to Missouri's Mark Twain. In I Love You, Miss Huddleston we are transported to 1970's Danville, Indiana, the everyone-knows-your-business town where Gulley still lives today, to witness the uproarious story of Gulley's young life, including his infatuation with his comely sixth-grade teacher, his dalliance with sin--eating meat on Friday and inappropriate activities with a mannequin named Ginger--and his checkered start with organized religion.
Sister Mary John had shown us a flannelgraph of the apostles receiving the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. They looked quite happy, except that their hair was on fire. . . . I was suspicious of a religion whose highpoint was the igniting of one's head, and my enthusiasm for church, which had never been great, began to fade.
Even as Kennedy was facing down Khrushchev, Danny Millardo and his band of youthful thugs conducted a reign of terror still unmatched in the annals of Indiana history. With Gulley's sharp wit and keen observation, I Love You, Miss Huddleston captures these dramas and more, revisiting a childhood of unrelieved and happy chaos.
From beginning to end, Gulley recalls the hilarity (and heightened dangers) of those wonder years and the easy charm of midwestern life.
