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Reviewed by Tanya Kays for Readers' Favorite
Donna Hills Patrick and Raymond Hills’s The Town I Crow About is an honest window into the real history of East Millstone, New Jersey. It takes us through the memories of a man who lived there for over ninety years. The book relies on raw verbal storytelling to document real-life changes from the Great Depression up through the World War II era and beyond. Raymond breaks down exact historical changes, such as how the Delaware, Raritan Canal went from a busy shipping port to a place for winter ice harvesting, and how the arrival of the Millstone Branch railroad changed local travel forever. He shares key memories of being a Boy Scout in his childhood, working at Nagle Manufacturing on a foot-pedal punch press during the war, and, much later, leading Troop 254 as an adult Scoutmaster through real outdoor challenges like canoeing the Class II rapids of Foul Rift. It is an inspiring record of family survival, backyard mechanics, and early Dutch land settlements. By and large, it shows how a community stays connected through true local resilience.
Donna Hills Patrick and Raymond Hills’s The Town I Crow About is an autobiography that leaves you feeling as if you’ve spent the afternoon sitting on a front porch listening to your grandpa share his life with you. Reading it feels entirely different from looking at a standard historical document because the focus stays on real, human moments. I loved learning how Raymond’s mother made beautiful clothes from chicken feed bags, and reading the funny story about the pilot who made an emergency landing in an alfalfa field, then paid the family back with gas stamps. The details about the local congregations combining for sunrise services at Knob Hill and the kids building homemade kites out of brown paper feel so authentic. It is wonderful to see how much care went into preserving the history of places like the Hutcheson Memorial Forest and the old Franklin Inn. This book is a beautiful reminder of how local memories shape our understanding of the past. Very highly recommended.
