Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, July 22, 1990                   TAG: 9007260014
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: B-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Reviewed by MARY ANN JOHNSON
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SAMS SPINS TALES FROM GA.

These stories are quiet, undramatic, essay-like descriptions of daily life in pre-1940 rural Georgia. Sometimes they are visual, as in "Tools": "He had the thickest hair I'd ever seen, erupting straight up from his scalp like a heavy crop of ripe wheat and then waving over the top like wheat does when wind blows over it in early June."

Sometimes they are humorous, as in "Private Lessons": "Given the almost militant credo of some historical societies that anything old should be preserved, it is surprising that there are so few privies left in the land."

Sometimes they are metaphorical, as in "The Big Road": "The downtown connector in Atlanta is like a carefully crafted necklace snuggling the neck of a lovely woman."

Sometimes they are admonitory, as in "The Wagon": "If you slow up enough around the courthouse square or on one of the few remaining dirt roads in the country (you can still catch the voices of the wagons and buggies). If you slow up enough."

And sometimes they are plain-spoken, as in "Caboose," which describes the passing of the freight train engines through the cut behind Joe-Joe's house: "Then the coal smoke would fill the air in the cut, thicker and stronger than the flatulence from two thousand cornfed mules, a repugnant but fascinating experience that was mercifully brief."

There is, at times, an odd, almost jarring rhythm to Sams' poetic reminiscences, and as stories admittedly they are inconsequential. As, however, a record of a past time, a lost place, an irretrievable moment, they are genuine and void of sentimentality. Unadorned with false pretenses, this little book is as warm and appealing as the smell of sun-baked heart pine.