The Devil Made the Small Town

By: Dorothy Lyons

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Synopsis: Once I said to Connie, my closest friend, "People keep saying I ought to write the story of the family, but I don't see how mine is any different from any others." She shot me a startled glance and after a moment said only, "Oh! brother!" Through the years my kin has urged me to put down some of the family anecdotes, all of which were told me by Mother whose prodigious memory gets most of the credit. Now at last in my seventy-fifth year I have done so lest they be lost with me and the young members be cheated of any feeling of family, or think that it sprang full-blown in the 20th century. In some instances I have dressed up these stories (or legends)--maybe fleshed them out is more accurate. The community where my family and I grew up could be Everytown or Anytown, U.S.A. Since those Toonerville cartoons of so long ago, the name epitomizes America's small towns and I have used it as such. I am sure there are errors and misstatements as in all works that depend on that frail instrument, the human memory, but I have kept it as accurate as I could. A few times I may have mixed names up harmlessly, and in some instances I have deliberately changed names to protect the guilty. Possibly the readers' biggest problem is that the entire work is organized by subject rather than chronology. This means sudden changes of time and place and, perforce, some shifting back and forth, but if you will just "roll with the punches" it will all blend into the whole. Bon appetit.