Summer of '49 Hot Dogs, Hot Tamales And Number Two Tubs

This story is loosely woven around the snap shots of one boy's questionable memory of the Summer of 1949. This is an account about what the writer and his family did. Although there were probably a thousand black kids in all of the Saginaw Schools, there were a lot fewer eleven and twelve year olds. They all lived a different life, in different families, in the same town. And yet, they all shared and lived the same kind of life. Most importantly, their families all agreed on what was right and wrong in a moral sense-whether they lived it or not. And everybody watched everybody's children in Saginaw, Michigan. The skeleton of the story is real. The fabric or fill in parts of the account is mostly fiction. So, this is going to be the writer's story. This is what he remembers and how much he loved hot dogs, hot tamales, and bar-b-que cooked on number two wash tubs in the "Summer of '49." Retiring as an automotive engineer from Ford Motor Company and moving to Las Vegas, Charlie Bothuell was faced with the freedom to do all of those things he said he would do if he didn't have to work. So he started by writing a book. His first book is a collection of stories about his childhood and family. He grew up in a small Midwestern town, Saginaw, Michigan, during the forties and fifties. Always being curious and an observer, he was often told that he was always trying to see what was on the other side of the next mountain. And after leaving his home town, he did manage to peek over a few hills.