Alabama Bound Presents—Clyde Bolton Recalls Idyllic Southern Boyhood in New Memoir

Clyde Bolton has long been a dean of the Southern sports writing community. Now this popular columnist focuses his beguiling prose on his boyhood memories in the delightful memoir, Hadacol Days. The title is taken from a high school cheer: “Statham Wildcats on the Ball, They’ve Been Drinking Hadacol.” The Statham in the cheer refers to Statham High School, in Georgia—now as long gone as Hadacol but equally effervescent in the author’s nostalgic but clearheaded look back at what life was like in small Southern towns of the 1940s and 1950s. Bolton will share highlights from his latest release as the Birmingham Public Library (BPL) presents an abbreviated take on its annual Alabama Bound Series.

Alabama Bound Presents is a series of Alabama author talks and book signings offered free-of-charge by Birmingham Public Library in an effort to bring enriching cultural programs to downtown Birmingham and the city’s neighborhoods. Alabama Bound Presents highlights local and regional authors that reflect the diversity of our community and draw from a wide range of personal experience. Through programs such as these, the library seeks to provide Birmingham citizens of all ages with opportunities for entertainment, ongoing education, and personal growth and an opportunity for local authors to publicize their latest work. This series replaces the one day event, Alabama Bound, previously held in the spring of each year.

Clyde Bolton is the author of six novels and a dozen nonfiction books about football, auto racing and other subjects. When he writes about baseball, you get a tale that recreates the sights, sounds, and smells of the stadium, but attention to detail is focused on the simple activities and pleasures of childhood and adolescence in Statham and other small towns of that time and place—representative of the experiences of a generation of Southern young people in the middle of the twentieth century.

Additional programs are scheduled as part of the Alabama Bound Presents Series. For more information, please visit the BPL Web site at www.bplonline.org or call (205) 226-3742.

Details
Central Library, Arrington Auditorium
Tuesday, October 5
6:30-8:00 p.m.