Art Odell

The Boys of Nepera Park: "Ain't No Law of God or Man North of the Odell Bridge" Art Odell

With thirteen stories about boys being boys, Art Odell transports you to the 1940's and the wild escapades of teenage kids in a rural community of New York State in an era of unbridled, unabashed freedom and independence, when you slammed the screen door behind you on a summer's morning and didn't slam it again till suppertime when - forced to wash your face and hands - you gulped down the meat and potatoes and let it fly again -doing as you pleased from sunup till sundown; nobody bothering you and nobody knowing what you did, and when not even your worst enemy for the day would rat on you, and the only rules to go by were the ones you made up, and sometimes what you'd been taught and mostly what you thought was right at the time, like blowing a trolley car off the track, rustling a circus horse and hiding it in a friend's backyard, saving a family of muskrats from Booby "the trapper" playing "Ratgolf " on the city dump, launching Booby's mother's cat in a "borrowed" circus balloon and watching it fly off to Connecticut. Truly safe from harm, the only real threat to your well-being was yourself, or awful bad luck, and the closest thing to a dangerous drug was a cigarette. It was a brief magical moment in time that only great prosperity and progress could eradicate.