Yorktown: Growing Up in Small-Town Iowa

In this tender but unblinking portrait of his tiny hometown, Richard B. Ulmer Jr. describes an enchanted boyhood amid the creeks and cornfields of Yorktown, Iowa, where his father was superintendent of a two-room Lutheran school. With shrewd economy, Ulmer depicts a whimsical place inhabited by Midwestern archetypes: laconic farmers with seed-cap tans; a mayor tasked with plinking rabid dogs with his .22; a leading citizen who serves as "postmaster, slaughterhouse proprietor, butcher, grocer, and possessor of the fire truck's keys." Ulmer and his five sisters enjoyed childhoods guided by a common-sense credo: "Don't get a big head." They roamed a wilting hamlet that seemed a wonderland, with its public croquet court, mysterious "shivaree" rituals outside the homes of newlyweds, and a concrete bandstand in the middle of main street-"a looming liability in another time and place," Ulmer writes. "But Iowans were so good-natured, and Yorktown had so few assets, that no one ever sued."

Author: Lynne D. Schneider, Richard B. Ulmer Jr
Publisher: News Ink Books
Published: 11/09/2012
Pages: 124
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.33lbs
Size: 7.99h x 5.24w x 0.29d
ISBN: 9780984903627

About the Author
Dick Ulmer decided to change careers after ten years as a Nebraska newspaperman, at the weekly Omaha Sun, Lincoln Journal-Star, and, finally, the Omaha World-Herald. He explains, "After writing the day-after-Thanksgiving shopping story for the third year in a row, I decided to try law school." He graduated from Stanford Law and enjoyed a long career in California as a civil litigator for clients such as Adobe, and Apple. In 2009, he was appointed a Superior Court judge in San Francisco.

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