Our Barn in Summer: Remembering Portersville

Author''s note: I''m in my mid-eighties, and I''ve just finished writing this collection of poems drawn from my boyhood years. They''re not poems about my early life-they''re poems from my early life.

Each poem arose from a separate journey. I went back, became the boy I once was, then took a snapshot of something happening in that place and time.

The place is a small farming and coal mining community in Western Pennsylvania. The time is my boyhood years, 1929-1937 or thereabouts.

I''m sending these snapshots to my children and grandchildren. I''m also offering them to you, hoping you''ll enjoy them.

Robert Oliver
August 2008