Read an Excerpt
Gum-Dipped
A Daughter Remembers Rubber Town
By Joyce Dyer The University of Akron Press
Copyright © 2003 Joyce Dyer
All right reserved. ISBN: 1-884836-99-2
Chapter One
My dad reached out the window of our Hudson Hornet and tapped the ash from his Camel. His finger struck the paper fast, as if it were made of pure nerve, not bone.
We were driving down Main Street in the fall of 1952. It was moving day and I was five years old and we had just bought a little Tudor house in Firestone Park with ivy and purple clematis that crept up the sides.
The Tom Coynes would never move again. I would leave, but they would stay and finish out their lives there.
To get to Firestone Park from our old neighborhood of Goose-town, my father could have driven south on Grant Street or Brown, but he took Main Street instead-Harvey's road, the road that ran parallel to the factories. In my father's mind, South Main was the road to everything he cared about, and he wasn't going to drive down any other.
We drove past the Firestone Bank. That was always our bank, and now it held our new mortgage. After we crossed the Harvey S. Firestone Memorial Bridge and approached the mile-long factory complex, my dad began to ask me to name the buildings as they came into view, just the way he did on less momentous trips.
"Clubhouse!" I screamed, as our car wobbled over railroad tracks.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Gum-Dipped by Joyce Dyer Copyright © 2003 by Joyce Dyer. Excerpted by permission.
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