An Appalachian Boy’s Life: A Walk in Three Centuries by Flem R. Messer

What an amazing life! Flem Messer has often found himself in situations that offered few good options, but he is so likable and so obviously competent, that he has somehow landed, over and over again, on his own two feet. Although he was born in 1935, Flem Messer considers his memoir to take place over three centuries, as noted in his sub-title, because he grew up deep in the mountains of Southern Clay County and Northern Knox County. There, the way he lived was like the way his great-grandparents, who he knew well, lived in the middle of the 19th Century. Flem dropped out of a one-room-school when he was in the fourth grade at the age of 15, and then his life involved working a series of temporary jobs in temporary places, often in the timber industry. After a stint as an industrial worker in Indianapolis, he enrolled in Berea College’s Foundation School, and from there eventually obtained a college degree. Much of this book is devoted to the exciting years he spent working in the War