Illustrated by Kollman Cummins, age 9, in January 2022 for the 97th birthday of Dr. Jim Cummins...
Dad Stories: Fun Old Orchard Tales by Dr. Jim Cummins
These slice-of-life stories by Dad share his childhood growing up in a tiny country village during the 1920s and 1930s. They are collected with other stories in Boy at Dix: Mostly True Stories of a Boyhood in Southern Illinois, edited by Sarah Cummins Small. We asked Leila Sherman, age 12 of Eve's Cidery, to illustrate them for the web site. You can read more about Dr. Jim Cummins.

Illustrated by Maxwell Cummins, age 6, in January 2022 for the 97th birthday of Dr. Jim Cummins ...

It's 1938, and the day of Ben Davis apples is past, so the Ben Davis trees that Grandfather had put...

It was never the simple job it looked to be – stacking would go well until we had 90% of the...

When a customer came calling, Grandmother would head for the special pen of young chickens. She had a special chicken-catcher....

There must have been half a dozen bikes on the streets of Kell. One kid had a wire basket...

I spotted the painters’ buckets—big paint brushes soaking, lots of white stuff in the buckets. ...

Open all three blades. Long shining blade straight out; peeler blade straight out the other end; little peeler at right...

I tapped her nose to slow her down. Frankie stopped, snatched my stick, bit it in two. “Don’t tap on...

Miss Gladys showed us how to play Fox and Geese. We had never played a game in the snow. Fox...

Little Pearl hated to get wet, really hated it, hated getting wet worse than about anyone I ever knew....

All day long the apple butter simmered, and at last at sundown ol' Miz Wilson pronounced it nectar-ready. ...
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