The Last Road Rebel—and Other Lost Stories
Growing Up in a Small Town—and Never Getting Over It
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Growing up in that small, peaceful town surrounded by my parents, twelve aunts and uncles, fourteen cousins, two brothers, dozens of school friends and classmates and their parents, many helpful neighbors, and most of the rest of the town’s 1,800 residents—all of whom seemed to know my name—was a nurturing environment hard to duplicate anywhere today. Kids could stray and get into trouble if they wanted to, but it was nearly impossible to stray too far or get too deeply into trouble—everyone looked out for everyone else. But in my case, it wasn’t for lack of trying.
The number of high school students who graduated then, as well as now, was nearly 100 percent, and the number who immediately went on to some form of additional education, the military, or into a job was nearly the same 100 percent. During a class reunion several years ago, I listened as the high school principal described how the about-to-graduate senior class—with the exception of one individual—had all finalized their plans for either going on to college, joining the military, or had already found an occupation.
That one individual was undecided. He could have been me—forty years earlier.
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About the Book
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 farming—corn, wheat, hay, alfalfa, and soybeans, along with some dairy farming—and there were always cows and pigs in the fields. And it’s 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 stories—some hilarious, some horribly sad, and some just fun—tell 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.
About the Author
Robert Gilberg earned an engineering degree from Ohio State University and is now retired from thirty-five years in the high-technology world of integrated circuit design, computers, and digital television. Gilberg lives in his adopted homeland of Southern California with his wife, Nikki. This is his debut book.