Life is . is a roller coaster ride. It has peaks of exhilaration and valleys of despair. The author will make you happy and at times he will tug at your heartstrings. When he feels that the reader may be stretched a little, he will take you off the roller coaster. He will take you on a trip, tell you funny stories, and philosophize about life in general. He will quote scriptures to support his feelings about why things happen as they do. But rest assured, he will put you back on that roller coaster. When I finished the manuscript and laid it down, I had a hard time letting it go. I started thinking about what life is to me. As I compared the author's ideas to my own, it occurred to me that is what the author intended. If it is, he accomplished his purpose. Charles R. Brown Ray Rouse was born on a farm in Lenoir County, NC, about five miles west of the City of Kinston. He was born in 1924, the youngest of nine children-seven boys and two girls-including two sets of twin boys. His father was a renter of farms, having lost his own farm through fiscal difficulties in 1918. The family moved off the farm and into Kinston when Ray was six years old. Those were hard times in which family members dropped out of school in order to find jobs to help support the family. After surviving the Great Depression and thirty three months in the US Army during World War II, he married Annie Phillips after a courtship of two years-and became father of a son and daughter. He retired from the insurance profession at age seventy. He and his wife live a quiet and enjoyable life in Kinston, NC, a city of about 23,000 population.

Through a series of illustrated vignettes, Doodlebug Island chronicles the lives of the slightly off-centered folks who live on the island's scenic shores. Separated from the rest of Arizona by the waters of Oak Creek, Doodlebug Island provides a haven for the inhabitants and their eccentricities, which mix, clash and create a multitude of comical-and usually chaotic-situations. Written with a slightly acerbic but definitely humorous edge, Doodlebug Island challenges the status quo on a variety of issues and engages readers in the triumphs, trials and frustrations of its characters' daily lives.

Don Hofsommer chronicles the twentieth-century history of a transportation giant. Here is a story of divestiture and merger, Sunset Route, and Prosperity Special. " . . . a treasure house of information about the Southern Pacific Company . . . . This book is a joy to read."--Richard C. Overton, from the Foreword

Frank C. Brown organized the North Carolina Folklore Society in 1913. Both Dr. Brown and the Society collected stores from individuals—Brown through his classes at Duke University and through his summer expeditions in the North Carolina mountains, and the Society by interviewing its members—and also levied on the previous collections made by friends and members of the Society. The result was a large mass of texts and notes assembled over a period of nearly forty years and covering every aspect of local tradition. members of the Society. The result was a large mass of texts and notes assembled over a period of nearly forty years and covering every aspect of local tradition.

The New York, Susquehanna & Western Railroad arose in 1881 through the merger of several smaller railway companies that linked the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania to the industrial centers of the New York–New Jersey metropolitan area. Immediately successful in the coal business, the NYS&W also attracted tourists by promoting the beauty and rural charm of the Delaware Water Gap and building picnic facilities for same-day excursions from both ends of the line. The company's fortunes rose through the 1920s, fell in the 1930s, surged in the 1940s as it became one of the region's busiest and most innovative passenger lines, and slowly declined from the 1950s until finally passing into bankruptcy in 1976 and reorganization into a regional freight hauler. As expertly and engagingly told in this heavily illustrated book—the first in-depth history of the line—the story of the NYS&W vividly illustrates the challenges faced by the many smaller railroad companies that contributed to America's industrial growth and the inventive solutions their directors devised to surmount these difficulties in the service of local and regional needs. Robert E. Mohowski traces the company's tangled history from the founding of its direct ancestor—the New Jersey, Hudson, and Delaware Railroad—in 1832 through its acquisition by the Erie Railroad in 1898, its reemergence as an independent entity in 1940, and its thirty-six-year-long struggle to keep the railroad in business. As Mohowski accounts, the NYS&W throughout its history aggressively sought out new sources of revenue, particularly as the traffic in coal dwindled. Commuter service became the most successful of these activities, and the line's management invested heavily in upgrading its locomotive and passenger car fleets. The company introduced streamlined, self-propelled cars that provided fast, comfortable travel in northeast New Jersey (a prototype for New Jersey Transit's present-day Midtown Direct service). These efforts, however, proved insufficient to prevent the company's demise. Beloved by railroad enthusiasts, the New York, Susquehanna & Western serves as a case study in technological innovation and creative management and stands as an important chapter in the history of American railroads.

Our 1935 black Oldsmobile and heavily-loaded trailer drew hostile looks as we drove into Bakersfield and stopped at a shady park to check the tires. When Mother, Daddy, we two girls and our young brother, Skippy, got out, two work-hardened men in ranch straw hats and short-sleeved cotton shirts stood staring suspiciously at our California license plates. "Had those plates on long?" the shorter man challenged Daddy. "Guess you'd say so," Daddy answered pleasantly. Mother's hands were settling on her hips, a sure sign her indignation would be expressed verbally at the first sign of an insult from the men. The taller man took a step toward Daddy. "Hope you're not looking for farm work in Bakersfield 'cause there isn't any." Deliberately the man spat on the curb. "Every damn fool in Texas, Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma is either here or on Route 66 trying to get here in some beat-up jalopy. Not enough cotton or potatoes in all of Kern County to keep half of them busy." "No," Daddy said evenly. "Not looking for work. Just looking to head out of here in a few minutes." While Daddy circled our car and trailer, Mother glared at the men, snapped open her white envelope purse and drew out a bottle of Coty's Emeraude, dabbing a drop behind each ear. "It's so much hotter here than in Lynwood," she said loftily. "I don't know how people can stand it." Turning her back on the Bakersfield men she added, "Come on, children, let's get back in the car. And don't step in that filth on the sidewalk." As Daddy pulled away from the curb, Mother fanned herself with her purse. "Imagine, Bruce, you, a civil engineer looking for farm work. I'd like to have given those Bakersfield men a piece of my mind, and I would have too if your work weren't so secret. They treated us as if we were Dust Bowl migrants!" In California in 1935 twenty percent of the country's labor force was unemployed, and hobos regularly knocked on back doors for handouts. To survive in the Great Depression, our father had taken a job with an oil exploration party in the San Joaquin Valley. Our family packed up and left southern California to join him. Between 1900 and 1936 California led the nation in petroleum production. Oil companies, certain that great reserves of oil still lay hidden, sent exploration crews, called doodlebug parties, throughout California to find new fields. The intense competition among oil companies mandated secrecy concerning doodlebug party movements. By setting explosives off in a series of holes, doodlebuggers would measure the echoes and make a seismic record that might indicate the presence of oil. Our new life was scary because we girls, Nancy, age 10 and Sunny, 12, had been allowed to make the decision whether to follow our father or remain in comfortably familiar Lynwood, just south of Los Angeles. Still, we knew that our father felt fortunate to be holding a job, even one that worked a hardship on his wife and children. We left our home in Southern California and headed north over the Ridge Route, towing our possessions behind our car in a small canvas-covered trailer. Even though the security of our family unit buffered us against hardships, we girls were apprehensive. Still, we were excited about the new life that was unfolding. DOODLEBUG DAYS takes place in a California with a population of only six million. The Valley towns in which we lived were small and agricultural with tight-knit established families. For the employed, life was less complicated than it is today. Radios, not televisions, were prominently enshrined in each living room. In the small towns up and down the Valley, people pulled their kitchen chairs close to their radio to listen to President Roosevelt's fireside chats as he discussed solutions to the problems that marked the era.

Death and Gold Haunt Thea's Search for Max in Death by Doodlebug, a Cozy Mystery from Carol Caverly. --Present Day, Garnet Pass, Wyoming-- When Thea Barlow is left at the altar by her fiancé, Max, everyone, including the police, thinks she's been jilted. Thea's the only one who believes in Max, and she's determined to discover what happened to him. A note left on her door sends Thea and her best friend searching for a gold dredge known as a "doodlebug." The doodlebug is the beginning piece of the puzzle. The remaining puzzle pieces lead to family secrets, hidden gold, and violent prospectors. When bodies start to appear, fear dominates every turn on a path to an explosive finish. THE THEA BARLOW WYOMING MYSTERIES, in order All the Old Lions Frogskin and Muttonfat Dead in Hog Heaven Death by Doodlebug