Will This Be on the Test?
Saturday, April 13, 2019, 11am
Jim Gregory will be reading selections from his latest book,
Will This Be on the Test? on Saturday, April 13, at 11am at the San Luis Obispo County Railroad Museum.
Will This Be on the Test? is a collection of nonfiction stories about his family, about teaching teenagers (he liked it) and about San Luis Obispo County history, including Arroyo Grande's Civil War veterans, the Great Depression years and World War II.
The collection also includes stories about growing up in rural Arroyo Grande during the primitive time when there was no internet, no cell phones and not a single pizza parlor in San Luis Obispo County. Somehow, he survived.
Along the way, he encountered local wildlife, including barn owls, mule deer, steelhead trout, one mountain lion, both abalone and Pismo clams, and, while not exactly wild, a homicidal Bantam rooster.
His role models growing up included farmers and farm workers, a California ranchero who died in 1874, the local barber, two no-nonsense rural schoolteachers in a two-room school, and the Japanese-American parents of his friends, from the generation that endured internment in World War II.
Jim's stories are sometimes poignant and more often humorous, and they reflect his love for language and for local history. Expect a kind of San Luis Obispo County version of Prairie Home Companion's Lake Wobegon.
All of Jim's books will be available for purchase.
Biography:
Jim Gregory was raised in the Upper Arroyo Grande Valley, where his education began in the two-room Branch School. He graduated from the University of Missouri and earned his teaching credential at Cal Poly.
Brigid and Jim Gregory. Photo by Melissa Walker-Scott
He taught history, literature and the social sciences thirty years at Mission Prep in San Luis Obispo and at his alma mater, Arroyo Grande High School. He was named the Lucia Mar Teacher of the Year in 2010-11.
Since retiring in 2015, he's written four books intended to link local history with events in American history: World War II Arroyo Grande, Patriot Graves: Discovering a California Town's Civil War Heritage; San Luis Obispo County Outlaws: Desperados, Vigilantes and Bootleggers and Central Coast Aviators in World War II. Both Patriot Graves and Outlaws have won national recognition, with the latter winning first place in Western history in the 2017 National Indie Excellence Awards, a competition for independent and small-press publishers.
Jim lives in Arroyo Grande with his wife, Elizabeth, a teacher at St. Joseph High School, his sons John and Thomas, two Irish setters and one Basset hound.
