Reviewed by Becky Mushko

"Sooner or later," writes Roanoke author Rodney Franklin, "we all go back home, if only in our minds. That's where our roots are. That's where we all began." Tyler's Shop, Franklin's self-published book, is his "attempt to step back in time, and again make contact with that part of me that somehow got lost..." A combination of memoir and autobiography, history of the 1940's and early 1950's, genealogy, personal philosophy, scrapbook, and literary journal, Tyler's Shop is a delight to read. 

Although the book could easily be titled, Impressions of a Bedford Boyhood, Franklin gets his title from the shop where he and his sisters and neighbors used to wait for the school bus to take them to Montvale. The impressions he gathered in those early years contributed to his development as a person as well as a writer. As Franklin grew older, he wondered what happened to all the people who met there to wait for the bus and what did they take with them into the world. Tyler's Shop, in a blend of prose and poetry, is the answer to those questions.

Many of Franklin's short stories and poems trace their inspiration back to life's lessons that he learned during the Tyler's Shop days. The first poem in his book begins:

At Tyler's shop each morn we huddled
under the open shed, seeking shelter
from the wet, wind and chill-
waiting for the bus to top the hill.

Had we an inkling then as to where or how far we'd go?

In subsequent pages, Franklin proceeds to tell the reader how far he's gone. The book begins in 1943 when Franklin was eight and his family moved to the Guy Wills' place ("a sagging, weather-beaten house with no electricity or indoor plumbing") and where he caught the school bus at Charley Tyler's former blacksmith shop that owner Ernest Gross converted into a place to transform a car into a tractor. Before the book ends in 1952, Franklin tells of his experiences growing up on a farm ("Shoes? One pair a year. If you outgrew them? Tough. To go barefoot from April to October was not a fad, it was a given."), his family life and school experiences, his summer jobs (among them cannery worker and ditch digger), his impressions of World War II and the Korean War, and his beginning in the armed services. 

And much, much more. Tyler's Shop has something for everyone. Besides the plethora of boyhood recollections, Tyler's Shop is well illustrated with numerous pictures and references to headlines in the Roanoke Times. Because Franklin mentions many names and many places in Bedford County, anyone with connections to the area will find Franklin's recollections a particular treasure.

Tyler's Shop can be ordered from the author (e-mail ampaw@aol.com or by phone (540) 982-1654. The book is also on sale at Perdue's Book Shop in Salem and Hamilton's Antiques & Books in Bedford.