The Last Road Rebel—And Other Lost Stories

Book excerpt: New Bremen, Ohio, was mostly like countless other small farm towns in that part of the state in the 1950s. The primary business at the time was farmingcorn, wheat, hay, alfalfa, and soybeans, along with some dairy farmingand there were always cows and pigs in the fields. And its where author Robert Gilberg spent the first twenty-two years of his life. In The Last Road Rebel, he shares what it was like growing up in that small town. In this memoir, Gilberg admits he is probably lucky to have survived his childhood; some of his friends did not. He is also lucky to have met the right girl at the right time who unknowingly gave him the push needed for him to climb out of an early life with a limited future. The storiessome hilarious, some horribly sad, and some just funtell of a young person who experienced the tortures of found and lost teen love, knew the disappointment of poor preparation for life after school, and finally looked himself in the mirror and decided it was time to get out of that place. Against the backdrop of the times, when the sounds on the radio were changing from Perry Como and Patti Page to Bill Haley and the Comets, Elvis, and Little Richard, The Last Road Rebel recalls the times, places, people, events, and experiences that have stayed with Gilberg forever.