Home Country – The Book
By Rachel Mendell
Inquirer Editor
www.galioninquirer.com
Book Review – Home Country: Drama, Dreams and Laughter from America’s Heartland, by Slim Randles, published by Rio Grande Books, www.LPDPress.com, available on Amazon and www.slimrandles.com
A few months back I started getting the Home County columns free in my email inbox. I didn’t order them. They just showed up. After reading the first short column I was hooked. I liked them mostly because they had a new voice, and because they were short and sweet. An editor gets pretty tired of reading all those 1,500-word rants against the government. Home Country columns by Slim Randles were fresh and they made me smile.
So, I did a little research, found the book Randles published last year and ordered it.
Ten pages into the book I started to feel like I had met Randles somewhere in Morrow County during my reporter gig covering normal, common sense folks with interesting quirks.
After 20 pages I started to recognize a few of the characters that hang out at the Mule Barn Truck Stop Philosophy Counter and World Dilemma Think Tank. I’ve met them in Galion.
Thirty pages into the book I felt like I was part of the Home Country community. I read just a few chapters (columns) every day, not because that’s all I can take, but because I know I will be sad when I get to the end.
Home Country is a collection of the best of the Slim Randles columns. He organizes the chosen batch into the four seasons. Each tiny chapter makes me smile, or think, or laugh, or wonder why I didn’t thank my dad more often, or reminds me to send a note to my mom.
I’ve been reading the Home Country columns we have published in the Galion Inquirer since they first appeared, but the ones in the book are all new to me.
So here’s my advice: Take a break from politics, high fuel prices, big government, bad news on the TV, your neighbors having another alcohol-induced fight, and take a trip to Home Country. The folks there are a lot like us. There’s Steve the cowboy, Randall the love-struck teen, Dewey the hard-luck case, Doc, Dud, Delbert from the local chamber of commerce, and, of course, Slim, who I figure stays up late and writes it all down after it happens. You won’t be sorry. You might even see your troubles shrink back to their original size, or disappear completely.
Just a reminder – we run the Home County column every Wednesday in the Galion Inquirer, usually on page 4.
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