Once upon a Farm: Tales of Discovery (Paperback or Softback)

In this amusing collection of tales, Ellis Worth reminisces about not only his childhood on a Minnesota farm but also many other episodes in his life. These are not sentimental recollections; nor is this an anthology of first-person memoirs. The reminiscences are embedded within enjoyable stories about fictitious characters in equally fictitious settings. But, in accordance with Mark Twain's assertion "Write what you know," Ellis Worth wrote what he knew. In this fictitious context, he relates his own experiences, personal discoveries, and outlook on social mores of the time, the mid-twentieth century.

Ellis Worth tales are unique. They are usually quite short and compact, offering an amusing and occasionally ribald narrative of some incident in its characters' lives-that is, presumably in his life. Worth seeks to entertain through his use of colloquial, everyday vernacular, bringing his principal characters' personality traits humorously to the forefront. He also seeks to provoke thought, sometimes leaving it up to the reader to join him in imagining the end of the story or to ascertain the symbolic meaning of some passage. In that way, these stories deliver subtle alternatives to prevailing wisdom.

As a lawyer, Worth featured the legal profession in one way or another in many of his stories: a practicing lawyer, a judge, a courtroom trial. Usually satirical, they narrate Worth's disenchantment with the law and his failed private practice. After closing his law office, he was unemployed for two years. During that time, Worth often wrote about characters he met, recounting their tales, while sitting on a park bench enjoying the sun or in a tavern. Out of financial necessity, he returned to the law but from a different angle, taking a routine editorial job at a company that produced law reference books. That menial workplace became the setting for several other amusing stories, rife with satire.

Throughout, Worth extols his sense of place, the Minnesota farmland of his youth and the Colorado Rocky Mountains of his middle-aged adult life when he wrote most of these stories. Indeed, the Midwestern fields of grain, the lakes, the mountains, the sunsets, the cool high-altitude breezes are as much protagonists as the characters themselves. Equally noticeable is the historical time frame of these stories. Worth wrote them in the mid-twentieth century. Accordingly, they refer to people and events of that era. In that regard, these stories chronicle interesting tidbits of the history of that time period. Likewise, Worth used terminology of that era, leaving it as part of the historical record.

A Minnesota native, Ellis Worth (1911-1972) spent much of his adult life as a lawyer and writer in Colorado. He has published another collection of short stories, The Sonora Springs Tales: A Collection of Ellis Worth Short Stories (Annandale Press, 2021).

Dean O. Smith is professor emeritus at the University of Hawaii. He has authored 135 scientific publications and four books on university administration. And, he has edited a collection of Ellis Worth stories, The Sonora Springs Tales. Dr. Smith received his B.A. from Harvard University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University.