My Three Lives

"My Three Lives" offers a snapshot of several ways of life that have almost disappeared. Farming in 1940's and 50's rural Pennsylvania often still depended on horses and was only slowly adopting the forerunners of today's machinery. The first third of this book describes in vivid detail how farm families lived, what they ate, and how they helped each other to survive. When the author left the hard farm life, he began an almost equally difficult life as one of the first male nurses, and his hospital experiences make up the central core of the book; but his third "life" as an itinerant pastor for groups of churches in Pennsylvania mountain towns and villages provides a glimpse of life many moderns will find difficult to believe. Often traveling over remote dirt tracks, Pastor Tom drove the miles between as many as three churches on any given Sunday and delivered a different sermon to each according to its sometimes difficult principles and beliefs. He became part of these sturdy and independent families, grew to love them, and served them for 22 years before returning to his roots on a small farm just a few miles from where he started.