Population: 485- Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time (P.S.)

by Michael Perry

Paperback, 2015

Status

Available

Call number

920

Genres

Publication

Harper Perennial (2007), Edition: 1, 234 pages

Description

Biography & Autobiography. History. Nonfiction. Humor (Nonfiction.) HTML: "Part portrait of a place, part rescue manual, part rumination of life and death, Population: 485 is a beautiful meditation on the things that matter." �?? Seattle Times Welcome to New Auburn, Wisconsin (population: 485) where the local vigilante is a farmer's wife armed with a pistol and a Bible, the most senior member of the volunteer fire department is a cross-eyed butcher with one kidney and two ex-wives (both of whom work at the only gas station in town), and the back roads are haunted by the ghosts of children and farmers. Michael Perry loves this place. He grew up here, and now�??after a decade away�??he has returned. Unable to polka or repair his own pickup, his farm-boy hands gone soft after years of writing, Perry figures the best way to regain his credibility is to join the volunteer fire department. Against a backdrop of fires and tangled wrecks, bar fights and smelt feeds, Population: 485 is a comic and sometimes heartbreaking true tale leavened with quieter meditations on an overlooked Amer… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Cheryl_in_CC_NV

Transcendentally beautiful, heartwrenching, and lol funny - often all on the same page. I suppose I ought to tell you I grew up in a town almost as small as New Auburn, less than an hour from there, and am only a few years older than Mike. But I really don't think that disclaimer is relevant. This

another amazing book by one of my very favorite authors and I highly recommend it to everyone. But don't take my word for it - consider:

We know we're rubes, we just don't want to be taken for rubes."

"By the time the lumberjacks swept through in the mid to late 1800s settlement of the area was well underway, fueled by the usual mincemeat of destiny and deception... the Indians were gone.... Today, when I see the cornfields sprouting duplexes and hearing my neighbors mourn the loss of the family farm, ... I can't help but think that this land has been lost before."

"... in the days of the Sioux and Ojibwa, the timber [was] so thick snow clung to the side of hills through the end of summer. When the logging crews stripped the trees, sunlight went straight to the earth, and the growing season expanded by ten days, or so a local history book claims."

"Be grateful for death, the one great certainty in an uncertain world. Be thankful for the spirit smoke that lingers for every candle gone out."

"

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LibraryThing member helpfulsnowman

Good book about a man finding his way back home. After leaving, Michael Perry returns to small-town Wisconsin where he works as an on-call first-responder with the fire department. When I described the book to a friend, he was afraid it would dip into schmaltzy territory, stories of charming old

folks on the porch and helmet-thumping firefighter pride. Well, it doesn't. It presents the magic of a small town without pushing it into talking about the good ol days or any of that nonsense. Personally, I prefer Perry's Truck: a Love Story, but this is a good one too and is of special interest to anyone involved in the medical profession.

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LibraryThing member rfewell

This book was on Wisconsin Public Radio's "Chapter a Day". I used to feed my son lunch, do the dishes, and listen to a chapter a day on the radio...
It was a great book about small town America.

LibraryThing member dawng

I heard this author speak on Wisconsin Public Radio and fell in love with him. I wish I could say the same about the book. For some reason, I just couldn't get into it. I will try it again, someday.

LibraryThing member omniavanitas

I found the writing style a little hard to get into at first. It's a bit precious for my taste, but I did enjoy the book ultimately. He doesn't romanticize, but the stories are interesting.

LibraryThing member aliciamalia

Another library book, with yet another misleading cover. The jacket claims it's about finding entrance into a community by being a volunteer firefighter. It is about being a volunteer firefighter, but this guy never finds a community. You get the distinct feeling that he wrote this book so that

people would think he has friends. It's weird.

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LibraryThing member ferdinand1213

This book was an important part of my naturalization as a Wisconsinite. I would definitely recommend it.

LibraryThing member sproutchild

My favorite of his books. Loved the small town stories and pictures painted of the people who inhabit it. Reading Truck: A Love Story now, and not finding it to be as engaging.

LibraryThing member jfclapp

Michael Perry doesn't write so much as ruminate. Reading a book by him is like sitting at someone's kitchen table and having them tell stories for a couple of hundred pages. Folks who expect a rollicking tale full of Bravery and Humor and Adventure about EMS work and nothing more are going to be

disappointed - in between those stories, Perry thinks about love, life, death, birth, the history of his small town, the archaeological value of trash, home (moving away from and how to come back to - and as someone who did the same thing, though I went farther afield, this is a theme that resonates with me), and really, whatever else comes to mind. I loved it.

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LibraryThing member knightreader1

Excellent reading, met the author at a bookstore reading in Spring 09 in Shorewood, WI

LibraryThing member ladycato

I found this at Savers. Since I'm always looking for books on EMTs for novel research, this book by an EMT/firefighter looked like it might be of use.

This book isn't intense on medical information or trauma cases. At heart, it's a memoir about love for a place--in this case, the small town of New

Auburn, Wisconsin. Perry's prose is eloquent as he describes leaving his family's farm to see the world, only to return and live right on Main Street in a town with 485 people and a lot of cows. Along with his mother and several brothers, he joins the volunteer fire department and lives his life by the pager. The geography of the place reflects his experiences--that was the house where the old man had a heart attack, that was the curve where the girl ran into a tree.

When I first started reading, I admit, I wasn't too sure about the book. It wasn't what I was going for. But as I read, Perry pulled me in with his understanding of humanity, both the beautiful and the despicably ugly. It's an easy and sometimes humorous read, but a few chapters (the last in particular) really hit me in the gut. He wrote about these small town hard-working people, and I felt like I knew them. It's a very different rural environment than where I grew up in central California (though they have the high cow population in common) but I came to underneath the town of New Auburn as a character itself.

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LibraryThing member Paulnakhiv

One of the best books I have read. Just....a perfect story/glimpse into the life of a man/a small town.

LibraryThing member HistReader

A great and interesting view into the volunteers who staff small town ambulance services. As a skillful author, Michael Perry will keep those unfamiliar with field medicine engaged.

LibraryThing member porch_reader

We are reading Population: 485 for my real-life book club this month. In it, Michael Perry shares his unique perspective on the small Wisconsin town in which he lives. After being away for a number of years, he returned to his hometown and joined the fire department. As volunteer firefighter and

first responder, he is called to help neighbors who he has known for years and even family members. While the book as a whole is a bit disconnected, there are passages that are beautifully written about his experiences as a firefighter and about the experience of living in a small town. I grew up in a town of just over 300 and currently live in a town of just over 2000, and I was impressed at Perry's ability to capture the experience of small town life.

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LibraryThing member crom74

Definitely worthy of a read. This is a good book chronicling one man's (and one community's) ties and bonds over the years. As one reviewer stated, it is random, but I think random in a good way. You get a good view of various things that happen that are all interconnected. I love small towns.

LibraryThing member Thomas_Cannon

powerful, moving. snapshot of what it is like to live in Wisconsin.

LibraryThing member Thomas_Cannon

powerful, moving. snapshot of what it is like to live in Wisconsin.

LibraryThing member Thomas_Cannon

powerful, moving. snapshot of what it is like to live in Wisconsin.

LibraryThing member BookConcierge

Michael Perry is a good writer with a gift for metaphor and descriptions so vivid you can hear the roar of the fire and smell the freshly mown hay fields. BUT ... the book is somewhat disjointed and I had trouble getting into it. Still, his ability to describe small-town life and the interactions

of characters is nothing short of charming and engaging. The last chapter is exceptional - worth the wait and earning the 4th star.

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LibraryThing member jonerthon

As a native of a small town and frequent reader, I've rarely found any writer that both covers rural issues and is so highly skilled (the Fellowses are skilled, but they are really journalists), so I guess Perry is the one I'd been seeking. This was one of his earlier titles about his

hometown/current home of New Auburn, Wisconsin, and introduces you to the place through the many calls he responds to as a volunteer firefighter.

The narrative is easy to follow but also frankly honest about the place, not skipping over the drug abuse or infidelity if it's relevant to the story, but also covering the skill and camaraderie of his fellow first responders. And while some of the chapters started as individual essays, they have been stitched together into a coherent story.

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LibraryThing member reader1009

adult nonfiction; firefighting in rural Wisconsin. I think Perry's other book (Truck: a love story) was better, but it's been so long since I read that, and it wasn't that memorable either.

LibraryThing member Thomas.Cannon

powerful, moving. snapshot of what it is like to live in Wisconsin.

LibraryThing member et.carole

Perry is one of the better nonfiction writers: his content is actually interesting, his prose is appropriate rather than pretentious, and he moderates his genre-requisite self-reflection with enough entertainment. The essay format seems natural to his style, but the geographic and communal focus of

his content provide the right amount of connection for the book to be unified. Some essays do remake the same narrative point with multiple stories, but the extra length was worthwhile in entertainment.

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LibraryThing member BobVTReader

Maybe it is because I live in Rural Vermont, state were 50% of the population is working on a book. Or maybe it is because this is a story of not about excesses, but about common people. This is a book that should be read. Chapter 13 is about Sarah, a story that sums up the closeness of rural

communities.

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LibraryThing member courtneygood

I read this soon after I read Ambulance Girl by Jane Stern (which I highly recommend). Population 485 is Michael Perry's account of small town life and work as a fireman. It's very random, and pretty entertaining.

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