Essays

264

A memoir by Rusty Van Reeves

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A Mississippi Writer
A Mississippi Writer

Newton Ave is a collection of over 50 stories first published in the Madison County Herald. The stories are a heartfelt look back at life in the 1970s within a small Mississippi town. They are reflective, somber accounts of childhood with an uplifting message. For many years my family lived with my Mam-ma and Granddad in a slightly dilapidated antebellum house on the edge of Newton Avenue and Deere Street. These stories were born during my time there in that wonderful place beneath the old oaks. Finding fragments of your own life in these pages will be easy. Most of my upbringing was as typical as it gets until a freak high school football accident in 1975 paralyzed me from the neck down. Six months later my father committed suicide. For a time Newton Ave was our Yellow Brick Road to the magical land of Oz but life takes its toll on all of us eventually. If you will, please join me in a place now long gone, but not soon forgotten--a place of Hula Hoops, banana bikes and endless carefree days where barefooted children lived out their dreams on a daily basis.