Review of “The Old Man and Me: Book 2” by R.C. Larlham

Score: 95/100 (9.5 out of 10)

The Old Man and Me: Book 2 is another personable, charming, and heartwarming memoir by R.C. Larlham. It is the direct sequel to our 2023 Non-Fiction Book of the Year (1st Runner-Up)!

This book, with the subtitle Stories I Didn't Get to Tell You the Last Time, continues covering the author's incredibly eventful and fascinating life. It is a life packed-full of ups, downs, twists, turns, triumphs, heartbreaks, drama, and shenanigans galore!

Like the first book, the sequel has a distinctly rural, country charm. That's evident even when the author leaves the country such as when he's deployed during the Korean War. You can take the boy from the country but not the country from the boy.

Indeed, we get to read a lot more about the author's farm-life shenanigans, akin to the farm-life shenanigans that we fell in love with in the first book.

For example, we read about the time when Chuck accidentally started a compost fire. We read about the time when folks at the country fair tried to milk a cow without a contraption to hold the cow still, creating quite a humorous predicament. Speaking of cows, we read about the time when a cow got loose and wandered the neighborhood!

We read about the intricate process of canning tomatoes and peaches, which the author describes in visceral detail, describing the fuzziness of the peach skins and the unpleasantness of the scalding/boiling water used to prep them. This is especially interesting to us after reading all these rural Civil War books by Ellen Murphy in which people were already canning these fruits in the 1800s, pretty much in the same way! The intertextuality is quite interesting in that regard.

You also really get an idea of what society and America were like in the mid-20th century, which was probably the most appealing thing about the first book. In one of this book's most interesting little stories, the author describes how, in his little town in Ohio, there was a “Negro Night” at the local skating park. Negroes only got to use the skate park on Wednesdays due to segregation. It was such a precarious situation that there needed to be security on staff to make sure Blacks were protected. The author, who became the designated security guard, noted how exceptionally talented several of the Black skaters were, regretting the fact that most of them couldn't reach their full potential because they were denied the right to practice on the ice on most days.

Not only does this story introduce us to the frustrations and intricacies of racial segregation at the time, it also shines a light on one of the book's other themes: tragedy and loss. See, Larlham got the position of security guard when the first guard, a friend and auxiliary sheriff, was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Despite being terminally ill, the auxiliary sheriff was determined to live the best life he could and to do the most good he could in the time he had left. That's very touching, and it goes along with an even bigger loss that occurs later.

Another exceptional thing about this book is how personable and conversational it is. You literally feel like the author is talking to you and telling you this story in person.

A lot of that has to do with the exceptional writing and how the author describes things. For example, he calls the family home the “being-forever-remodeled house.”

He refers to first-gear (on a manual vehicle) as being “behind-reverse.”

After learning of a partner's potential other lover, he comments, “I don't care about your other guy” but then says in his head (and to us, the reader): “(If we’re ever in the same state, I’ll kill him” before concluding “I love you” as if those negative thoughts never passed through his mind.

When a priest talks about the “vicissitudes of life,” the author comments “yes, I had to look it up too.”

It's hard not to get behind someone—whether a real-life person or a character—who conscripts you like this.

Anyway, this book takes the reader through the author's schooling days with the Crestwood High School Class of 1960, in which—despite low grades, he still scored the fifth highest SAT score in the state and getting kicked off the football team for swearing. On that note, we also get one of the best passages of the book (about his football days):

“I tried to play football... twice. The first attempt, I was too short, too heavy for my height, too slow, too scared and too uncoordinated. I couldn’t run, couldn’t throw a football and couldn’t catch one.”

In terms of his academics, the book really shines a light on the failures of the American education system—even 64 years ago—to adequately teach kids and accurately assess their intellect.

There's actually a lot to learn from this book!

Speaking of learning a lot, this book becomes a bit of a travel guide as it takes us on a multi-state trip with the Smithsonian to visit sites like Gettysburg and Washington D.C.

Eventually, Chuck finds himself enrolled at Hiram College, the so-called “Harvard of the Midwest” due to his aforementioned SAT scores.

And hijinks ensue. In probably the funniest story in the book, we're told that Chuck's psychology professor (who was a prison psychologist) was quite crazy himself, even staging a robbery with two ugly, dangerous-looking men in the classroom that almost gets people hurt or even killed when an actual U.S. Marine emerges from the classroom and treats it like the real thing!

Not only is this humorous enough, but we get this hilarious description of the supposed assailants:

“...one of whom had survived the worst acne attack ever (or smallpox) and the other of whom had a knife scar from the corner of his eye to his earlobe... which was missing”

So, the psycho psychology professor literally had dudes dress up like pirates to pull off this prank just to prove a point.

We also learn about the unfair yet somewhat humorous way that the professor grades assignments (on a skewed bell-curve) on which Chuck barely misses an A by one point on a subjective assignment.

However, perhaps the most important story that comes out of Chuck's experiences at Hiram College is his relationship/spring-fling with a girl named Trish, a sorta-foreign-exchange student from the UK. He calls kissing Trish, appropriately, “the best laugh of the summer.” We also get the hilarious nickname “Chuckleberry” and Trish's reminder for Chuck to “keep your pecker up” from these scenes.

Although the relationship isn't super-serious, it sets the precedence for two very important things: 1. Chuck's interest in people, events, and places outside of the United States, and 2. Arguably the most important relationship later on in the book, that being with Laura, his wife of over four decades.

The next major section covers Chuck's experiences as a medic during the Korean War. If you thought the hijinks and shenanigans were out of control in college, then you need to read about the ones that happen in this section!

Where do we even start with that?

Well, there was his feud with a captain over a court-martial springing from alleged missing rifles. There was the time when a guy kept challenging Chuck to fights, then kept backing out until he finally got himself beat up and forced to admit defeat. There was the time when an arrogant lieutenant fired a sidearm into the air, putting a hole in his ceiling, spraining his wrist and being forced to repair the ceiling despite the rank difference. There was the time when the camp thought it was under a chemical attack due to an awful smell and tear-inducing substance in the air which turned out to be rotting radishes from a radish farm, a “storm of tears.”

It should be noted that both the knowledge of guns/sidearms and of radishes forming the “storm of tears” both come from Chuck's rural upbringing.

Chuck has many other funny stories about serving in Korea including a mass-influx of circumcisions and vasectomies, the latter of which caused all sorts of problems.

Perhaps the most interesting thing to come out of this section are the stories of war veterans and heroes including medal recipients. Chuck recalls the “three heroes” who made an impression on him including a corporal who served in World War II but kept being demoted due to alcoholism triggered by PTSD (“bad dreams”) and a member of the Flying Tigers, a mercenary group that aided the Chinese in fighting the Imperial Japanese during World War II.

We also get the interesting story of the “USS Off Limits” on the way back from the war.

Now, it's after the war that this book really starts to become a bit long-winded and disjointed. It might be a case of too much going on or too much crammed into one book.

That's not to say that there's an absence of interesting or exciting things. For example, Chuck describes experiencing a huge 300-yard-wide tornado in Kansas. He discusses a really weird driving story which at least gives us the good passage: “ looked ahead for the beginning of the next curve – and
realized that the lights weren’t just the lights of cars! They were also the lights of a strip of buildings along the highway!”

We then segway into the author's life in Utah, particularly enjoying the camping life of fishing, snowshoeing, squirrel tracking, and hunting. It kinda brings the author back to his roots. He also attends Utah State, where he studies Environmental Science including entomology, the study of insects (despite being afraid of insects, bugs, and spiders).

However, the most important thing that happens in this final section of the book is that Chuck's relationship with “Lovely Laura” blossoms into a beautiful, long marriage after a series of tense, dramatic scenes.

People don't live forever, but love does. Chuckleberry's relationship with Lovely Laura is the highlight of the entire book, and Laura's fate is one of the most emotional experiences we've ever had reading a book.

Check it out on Amazon!