In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd (English) Paperback Book

Description: In God We Trust by Jean Shepherd A beloved, bestselling classic of humorous and nostalgic Americana, reissued in a strikingly designed paperback edition.Before Garrison Keillor and Spalding Gray there was Jean Shepherd: a master monologist and writer who spun the materials of his all-American childhood into immensely resonant—and utterly hilarious—works of comic art. In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash represents one of the peaks of his achievement, a compound of irony, affection, and perfect detail that speaks across generations.In God We Trust, Shepherd's wildly witty reunion with his Indiana hometown, disproves the adage "You can never go back." Bending the ear of Flick, his childhood-buddy-turned-bartender, Shepherd recalls passionately his genuine Red Ryder BB gun, confesses adolescent failure in the arms of Junie Jo Prewitt, and relives a story of man against fish that not even Hemingway could rival. From pop art to the World's Fair, Shepherd's subjects speak with a universal irony and are deeply and unabashedly grounded in American Midwestern life, together rendering a wonderfully nostalgic impression of a more innocent era when life was good, fun was clean, and station wagons roamed the earth.A comic genius who bridged the gap between James Thurber and David Sedaris, Shepherd may have accomplished for Holden, Indiana, what Mark Twain did for Hannibal, Missouri. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description A collection of humorous and nostalgic Americana stories-the beloved, bestselling classics that inspired the movie A Christmas StoryBefore Garrison Keillor and Spalding Gray there was Jean Shepherd- a master monologist and writer who spun the materials of his all-American childhood into immensely resonant-and utterly hilarious-works of comic art. In God We Trust- All Others Pay Cash represents one of the peaks of his achievement, a compound of irony, affection, and perfect detail that speaks across generations.In God We Trust, Shepherds wildly witty reunion with his Indiana hometown, disproves the adage "You can never go back." Bending the ear of Flick, his childhood-buddy-turned-bartender, Shepherd recalls passionately his genuine Red Ryder BB gun, confesses adolescent failure in the arms of Junie Jo Prewitt, and relives a story of man against fish that not even Hemingway could rival. From pop art to the Worlds Fair, Shepherds subjects speak with a universal irony and are deeply and unabashedly grounded in American Midwestern life, together rendering a wonderfully nostalgic impression of a more innocent era when life was good, fun was clean, and station wagons roamed the earth.A comic genius who bridged the gap between James Thurber and David Sedaris, Shepherd may have accomplished for Holden, Indiana, what Mark Twain did for Hannibal, Missouri. Author Biography For many years a cult radio and cabaret personality in New York City,Jean Shepherdwas the creator of the popular filmA Christmas Story, which is based on his novelsIn God We Trust, All Others Pay CashandWanda Hickeys Night of Golden Memories, and which has become a holiday tradition on the Turner Network. Jean Shepherd passed away in 1999. Review "Shepherd has a fine eye for absurdity, for the madness and idiocy in all of us."—Best Sellers Review Quote "Shepherd has a fine eye for absurdity, for the madness and idiocy in all of us." --Best Sellers Excerpt from Book We Meet Flick, the Friendly Bartender I felt like a spy. It was the first time I had ever ridden a cab in my own hometown. When I had left it I was definitely not a cab rider. Now taking cabs was as natural as breathing or putting on shoes. I could see the cab driver giving me the eye in his rear-view mirror. He was wearing the standard Midwestern work uniform of lumberjacket, corduroy cap, and a red face. "You from out of town?" He caught me off guard. I had forgotten that out of New York people quite often spoke to other people. "Uh . . . what?" "You from out of town?" "Ah . . . yeah, I guess so." Making one of my famous instantaneous decisions, I opted for being from out of town. "Yeah, well, I could tell. Where ya from?" "New York. Now, that is." He mopped his windshield with a greasy rag. The cabs heater was making the windows cloud up. Outside I could dimly see the grimy streets lined with dirty, hard ice and crusted drifts covered with that old familiar layer of blast-furnace dust; ahead of us a long line of dirt-encrusted cars carrying loads of steelworkers, refinery slaves, and railroad men to wherever they spent most of their lives. He went on: "Yep. New York. Me and my wife went there once. For two weeks. We saw the Fair. I sure dont see how anyone can stand to live there." We continued to rattle through the smoky gray Winter air. I watched a giant gas works drift by our port side. On the starboard a vast, undulating sea of junkyards rolled to the horizon. "Its okay to visit." I guess he threw that in so as not to hurt my feelings. "Oh, you get used to it." He blew his nose loudly into a red bandanna and laughed juicily. "Yeah, I guess a guy can get used to anything. If hes gotta." A crossing gate banged down in front of us, its flashers angrily blinking off and on. A warning bell clanged deafeningly as a giant Diesel locomotive swept across our bow, towing a short string of smelly tankers. Four brakemen clung to their sides, yelling to one another as they roared past. "What was that?" I shouted. "I SAID A GUY CAN GET USED TO ANYTHING." He bellowed back. The gate went up. We were off again. I fished into my briefcase, at last finding the onionskin on which I had written, for my own use, a thumbnail description of the town I was now riding through, my own despised hometown. As we roared and squeaked on, I read over what I had written: Hohman, Indiana, is located in the extreme Northwestern corner of the state, where the state line ends abruptly in the icy, detergent-filled waters of that queen of the Great Lakes, Lake Michigan. It clings precariously to the underbody of Chicago like a barnacle clings to the rotting hulk of a tramp steamer. From time to time echoes of the Outside World arrive in Hohman, but they are muted and bear little relevance to the daily life of its inhabitants. Theirs is a world of belching furnaces, roaring Bessemer Converters, fragrant Petroleum distillation plants, and freight yards. Mostly, their Social life is found in Bowling halls or Union halls or beer halls, not to mention dance halls and pool parlors. Theirs is a sandy, rolling country, cooled, nay, frozen to rigidity in the Winter by howling gales that got their start near the Arctic Circle, picked up force over the frozen wastes of Lake Michigan, and petered out in downtown Hohman, after freezing ears, cracking blocks, and stunting the Summer hopes in many a breast. In Summer the process is reversed, and the land lies still and sear under the blazing Midwestern sun. This is where the first faint beginnings of the Great Plains can be found. A gnarled cactus plant, rolling tumbleweeds; an occasional Snowy Owl. The residents of Hohman are hardly aware of this, although their truculent pride in being Hoosiers is seen everywhere. Under the soil of most backyards, covered with a thin, drifting coat of blast-furnace dust and refinery waste, made fragrant by the soaked-in aroma of numerous soap factories, lie in buried darkness the arrowheads, stone axes, and broken pots of the departed Indian. Where the tribes danced in Indian summer now grow Used Car lots and vast, swampy junkyards. Not far from downtown Hohman lie the onion sets and cantaloupe vines of the Dutch immigrant farmers, and then the endless, mile-after-mile monotony of the Indiana cornfields. To the West the sand dunes ring Lake Michigan almost to the border of Michigan itself. To the North--the Lake. And to the West and North--Chicago. It is a place people never really come to, but mostly want to leave. And leave they do, to go to the fabled East or to the unbelievable California coast. They rarely talk about where they have come from. There isnt much to say. At night in Hohman the rabbits still hop through the backyard gardens. The trains thunder through the dark on their way to somewhere else. The sky is always lit by the eternal flames of the Open Hearths and blast furnaces. Nothing much has changed, probably least of all those who were born and. formed by the Northern Indiana mill-town existence. Oh yeah? I answered myself. I have never been a fan of my particular style of Official Writer-ese, but, after all, its a living. Its a hell of a lot better than working in the Tin Mill, which we were now passing. We were getting into painfully familiar country: ragged vacant lots, clumps of signboards advertising paint, American Legion halls, bowling alleys, all woven together with a compact web of high tension wires, telephone poles, and gas stations. Home is where the heart is. In fact, not more than two blocks from where we now waited for a light I had spent the festering years of my childhood. I got out of the cab at the intersection and headed directly for Flicks Tavern, the tavern whose floors I had helped to clean as a tot, and where I had learned a few of Lifes seamier lessons. Flick himself had been an old boyhood sidekick who had taken over the tavern from his father, long since passed away. I hadnt seen him since my Army days. It was a cold, early December day and a few plastic wreaths were in evidence. The sign hanging out over the sidewalk read: BOOZE Flicks sense of humor obviously was still operating. Inside I instantly saw the place had changed little. The bar was longer, the jukebox bigger; there was a color TV hanging from the wall, but the air was as gamy and rich as ever, if not more so, a thick oleo of dried beer suds, fermenting bar rags, sweaty overalls, and urinal deodorants. I breathed in a deep gulp to clear my brain, kicked some snow off my Italian shoes, and sat down at one of the stools near the window. Down at the far end of the bar I saw a white-shirted back banging away at what appeared to be some sort of ice cabinet. He glanced up in the gloom and called out: "Whatll you have?" "A beer." "Ill be right with you." He went on working. Through the window I could see a Used-Car lot where once, I recalled in the dim past, a stand of willows had grown. It was midaftemoon, between shifts, so the tavern was empty. I looked back down the bar just in time to see the white-shirted figure draw a stein of draught, topping it off neatly with a good head. He sat it down in front of me. "How the hell are you, Flick?" I went right at him in a frontal attack. "Uh . . . okay. Howre you?" "Dont you remember me?" He looked at me in that long, wary Bartender stare, suspecting, at first, a touch. "Fer Chrissake!" "Yep, its me. Your old buddy." "Fer cryin out loud! What the hellre you doing back here in Hohman, Ralph?" I will now lightly pass over the ensuing sickening scene of boyhood companions meeting after years of elapsed time. Back-slappings, hollerings, and other classical maneuvers were performed. I told him why I had come back, about the piece I was supposed to do for an Official magazine on The Return Of The Native To The Indiana Mill Town. He snorted. They dont think of Hohman as a mill town. Its just Hohman. He had drawn a beer for himself and another for me, broken out a bag of pretzels, and we began to do some really good, solid Whatever-happened-to . . . ?, Did-she-ever-marry . . . ?, When-did-they-put-in-the-bowling-alley-down-at. . . ?, and all the rest of it. I could see that Flick was wearing a bowling shirt, white, with his team name stitched over the pocket. Bowling is the staff of life, the honey of existence, the raison d Details ISBN0385021747 Author Jean Shepherd Short Title IN GOD WE TRUST Pages 272 Language English ISBN-10 0385021747 ISBN-13 9780385021746 Media Book Format Paperback DEWEY 813.54 Year 1991 Imprint Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Subtitle All Others Pay Cash Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States Residence Sanibel Island, FL, US Birth 1921 Death 1999 DOI 10.1604/9780385021746 UK Release Date 1991-04-28 AU Release Date 1991-04-28 NZ Release Date 1991-04-28 US Release Date 1991-04-28 Publisher Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc Publication Date 1991-04-28 Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:7212070;

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