After a Meal Like This, You Don’t Need Dessert!

About the Book

“Happy days are here again” was President Roosevelt’s slogan in 1932 to quell the effects of the Great Depression. Meanwhile, half of western Oklahoma was blowing away in the Dust Bowl winds, resulting in hundreds moving west to find jobs. A few years after that, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, and we were at war with Japan and Germany. This is the setting on a small farm in northeastern Oklahoma in which a young boy with three older brothers and a younger sister must grow into adulthood. It was a good but tough life. A father becoming an invalid with Mom becoming the breadwinner made it tougher. “We were poor but we didn’t know it” was a common thought in later years. Everybody was in the same boat. Let these stories—some amusing, some sad—take you back to those times in the last century.

About the Author

Jack Connery, a native of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1956 with a journalism degree and a plan to be a top sportswriter, but the local draft board had other plans. Not liking that option, Jack completed Navy officer candidate school and was commissioned Ensign. He went to sea, got salt water in his veins and spent the next 21 years in the Navy, serving on five ships, with two tours in Vietnam. During his career he received a Masters degree from George Washington University. He retired as a Commander and, using his journalism and Navy technical training, worked as a technical writer in the pipeline industry, retiring again in 1996 when he started his own technical writing business. He retired again in 2012 to a retirement community in North Carolina. He is married to Juliet (Jill) and has four daughters, a son, and one stepdaughter.