Growing Up Walla Walla

About the Book

The Walla Walla O knew when he was young was a wheat and cow town in the remote southeastern corner of a remote northwestern state. Or at least the town and the state were remote when he grew up there. Perhaps Whitman college and its Conservatory made a difference, but its campus was only a place he pedaled by on his fly home from work, its museum a place to Visit once or twice a year, an auditorium where his mother sometimes sang. The men who influenced Oliver were a different breed.

Those were the men fatherless Oliver grew up around. Weathered men, ready to drink up their week’s wages, ready for a fight, men who took off their hats in the presence of a lady, and who would do business on a hand shake, they were part of Oliver’s Walla Walla. That’s why he wants to tell about them and about the two Walla Wallas.

About the Author

"John Kolars, born in Walla Walla in 1929, grew up there during the

Great Depression and World War II. During those decades the town was

transforming itself from a frontier settlement to the cultural center it is today.  At seventeen, he enlisted in the army, and with the help of a G.E.D. diploma and the G.I. Bill, became Professor of Geography and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan. He is recognized as an authority on water in the Middle East, and has received the title of Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the United States Foreign Service Institute."