13. Colonel Effingham's Raid

Title: Colonel Effingham's Raid
Author: Barry Fleming
Year Published: 1943
Year Printed: 1943

Date Acquired: April 12, 2015
Where Purchased: Already Read Used Books (Alexandria, VA)
Price Paid: $6

Read Status: Read (August 7, 2015)

Notes/Thoughts

• Officially, no longer caring about sticking to the local sections for this collection, but definitely still sticking to what I can randomly find at used bookstores for now. I guess I already relaxed that criteria in Lafayette and then first expanded to novels at The Hermitage, but now this one is both a novel and not local related. At least as long as I still have a to read pile of 1940s books, I'm not even tempted to start breaking the sticking to finding the books at used bookstores criteria for my collection. There was probably something local to be found here (I found a really interesting one that I had to pass up because it was sadly 1939) as it is a really fun bookstore to browse since it's just totally cluttered with books on shelves and in boxes. However, not finding something local in our cursory visit is kind of a good thing because my collection is currently very Virginia heavy.
• This ended up being a really interesting book about a retired Colonel challenging the local government mainly over repairing the existing courthouse rather than building a new one. The book and the historical context of it being as World War II is going on and the U.S. just entering as the book ends is summed up very well in the below quote.
• “But, floods, boy!” cried Cousin Willy. “Are you proposing to fight dictatorships abroad and submit to one in your home town?” (p. 88)
• “History is an ennobling study, —ennobling, as a man usually seems ennobled in death. History is humanity’s death mask and on it even our errors assume some dignity.” (p. 16)
• “We in the South regard our kin more or less in the light of an Organized Reserves, to be called to the colors in an emergency like a marriage or a funeral, and even to undergo an occasional training period at a family-reunion barbecue, but of the most part the kinship is an inactive service and we not only rarely encounter each other directly but if we chance to pass on the street are as likely as not to fail in recognition.” - p. 25
• “Most us in the South, you know, have a very prominent sense of humor; it works as a stabilizer against excesses, supplementing the action of the climate in discouraging us from acting either too quickly or too positively and so laying ourselves open to a sort of social sunstroke.” (p. 89)
• “That’s the wonderful thing about working in a Christian community; they know they are sinners and they know that any news is going to be bad. Buildings crumble, rust corrupts, thieves break in and steal, and there is no health anywhere. Taxes are high and benefits are low; that’s what the Bible says and that’s just how things are in the world. You don’t complain because that’s the way, mysteriously enough, it was meant to be; if you watch your step you may get a better break at the next stop." (p. 132-133)
• "'Seriousness won’t bite you.' 'I’m a Southerner, darling,' I laughed, 'and
  
  I’m scared to death of it.'" (p. 278)