Vermont, country life, Vermont -- Vernon 

"My knowledge of doing things was from Grandpa, form the way he done things. You see he lived in the time when everything grew in the woods, and he could make anything out of wood. When I come to think back about Grandpa, I see that in his young days he hardly bought anything except from the blacksmith. He was born in a log cabin; he was a farmer all his life; they grew their own wool, and dyed their own cloth, and made their own tallow dips and their own ink, and cut their own quill pens. They framed their own houses, and quarried their own slate. An old Indian taught Grandpa about medicinal herbs, and I still remember some of the things he
learned. This story is just going to be the country things that Gramp taught me; I thing they'd ought to be put down before they're forgotten altogether."

Told by Walter Needham, recorded by Barrows Mussey.

Taken from the front cover.

Just as if the old woodcuts had come to life, Walter Needham's reminiscences about his Grandpa show with black-and-white honesty and simplicity the country things and ways he knew and followed. These endured throughout the United States for more than a century - then sort of faded away in a dazzle of chrome and neon.

To Grandpa, the candle mold was a modern labor-saving device! He would yell and roar at cantankerous livestock, or his family if they didn't do quite what he wanted, but when something really happened, like lightning smashing the clock, he'd remark, "Ain't that a hell of a note!" and go cut down a tree to fix with it.

Cherry clockworks kept better time than maple, you'll learn, as this time machine of a book cuts back to the vital, crisp reality behind rosy Currier & Ives images of times past. It is the memoir of a life span linking us directly to the actuality of early America.

Taken from the inside front flap.

To LL Bond of Guilford, Vt (the Grandpa of this book) the candle mold was a modern labor-saving device! A few of the pioneer arts he was good at were:

Building stone walls and rail fences
"Laying up" a slate roof
"Laying in" a well (after dowsing the water and digging the pit)
Making pens and ink (out of saw filings, vinegar, and white maple bark)
Making paint that would "stay red forever" (out of powdered ochre and buttermilk)
Making paint brushes out of basswood bark
Working an ox team (horses too fast for Gramp!)
Making bullets and rawhide (out of woodchuck pellets)
Grafting fruit trees (he could grow pears on a thornbush!)
Making anything out of wood - from door hinges and clockworks to axe handles and water pipes, and much, much more you'll read in - A Book of Country Things . . . and everybody loves it!

Walter Needham never forgot what his grandpa taught him. He talked about it to his neighbor, Barrows Mussey - who recorded what Walter talked. The result is a direct link to the early American past, A Book of Country Things from 100 years ago, set down "before they're forgotten altogether."

Joseph Wood Krutch and others, say:

"Thank you very much for A Book of Country things. It rescues intimate details of our past hard to find elsewhere, and they are made all the more interesting by the flavor of the personality remembering them"

"The purest Americana, not to be missed . . . this amusing, entertaining and thoroughly American chronicle offers enough data and color of a way of life to induce acute nostalgia . . . So handsomely bound and printed as to make it worth owning even if its contents did not otherwise justify buying it - which they do." - August Derleth, Madison Capital-Times

"Old-time know-how, humor, Indian lore, and some fine old yarns, as passed on to Walter Needham by his grandfather, Leroy L Bond, who was born in a log cabin in southeastern Vermont in 1833. This is genuine, spirited Americana, with a special fascination for anyone who likes handicrafts. Illustrated with decorative little drawings." - Publishers' Weekly

"So appealing because it is the Currier & Ives prints come to life." - Victor P Haas, Omaha World-Herald

"Explains all the lost arts of pioneer living . . . It grown on you as you read along, and by the time you reach the end, you want to go back and read it again . . . It would not surprise me if this book should survive, to become a sort of classic in the field of 'country' writing." - Berkshire Eagle

"Wise in the self-sufficient ways of the country life of the last century. The details of this life vividly and most interestingly described." - Library Journal

Taken from the back cover.