Volume 1 of the Two Volume Paperback & Kindle Set
Growing up in poverty in Western Kentucky, Haskell’s family didn’t even have an outhouse. The roads were nearly impassable. Death and disease were endemic. And education (when it occurred) was at a one-room schoolhouse where the teachers weren’t averse to handing out beatings to the students—and the older students weren’t averse to turning the tables on the teachers.
When his father died leaving Haskell the head of the family at age 15, he is challenged to provide for his mother, grandmother and 7 siblings. Hearing of opportunities for well-paying work in the rubber industry of Akron, Ohio, he left home in 1917—just one more “hillbilly” heading north during The Great Migration.
What he discovers in Akron is one of America’s first great boomtowns where workers sleep three to a bed, are killed, poisoned or maimed on the shop floor and literally have to fight to survive. When a major recession hits in 1921 and throws him out of work, however, it will be his wife, Florence, that keeps them all alive.
Learn how they survived and what happened when Haskell took on the role of Chief-of-Police in Tallmadge, Ohio during World War II. Continue reading the family’s story in On A Burning Deck, Return to Akron.