In the Shadow of the Courthouse invites the reader to imagine coming of age (8 to 13) in Clinton, Iowa in the middle of the United States, in the middle of the century (1942-1947) and in the middle of this farm belt community of 33,000 snuggled against the muddy Mississippi River during World War Two, and in the shadow of the courthouse with its magnificent four-sided face clock chiming the time every half hour and looking down on you no matter where you might go. It is in this working class climate that the author came of age in the shadow of that courthouse while the nation struggled to come of age in the shadow of the atomic bomb. There was no television. There were no mega sports. Nor were there big automobiles, or manicured lawns. There was radio, movies, high school sports, and the Industrial Baseball League, where men too young or too old to go to war played baseball for the fun of it. Clintonians, as everyone was known, had victory gardens, drove old jalopies, took...