Every time Mirela was asked about her past, over dinner conversation or coffee, people would tell her she should write it all down. Her story is unique and very different to the lives of the circle of friends she has here in the Western world, but for anyone born in Eastern Europe, the events in this book will feel familiar. Her story could be anyone's, but unlike anyone else's life in Eastern Europe, Mirela had the opportunity to leave Romania at a relatively young age. She met many wonderful people along the way that have helped her achieve a new life in the US and to become the woman she is today. This book shows the differences between the two worlds.

A sardonic expedition into a small-town ethnic childhood and post-World War II America—and how to survive Rust Belt hard times. At last . . . a memoir finally worthy of comparison to the uproariously funny fiction of the great Jean Shepherd, author and narrator of the beloved A Christmas Story. Only . . . it’s all true. Sometimes . . . sadly true. Award-winning presidential historian and baseball scholar David Pietrusza’s witty and wise tale of growing up in the 1950s and 60s, Too Long Ago is no Leave It to Beaver or Father Knows Best episode. It’s a unique glimpse into an unjustly ignored and forgotten immigrant experience—Eastern European and devoutly pre-Vatican II Catholic. A tale of a tight-knit Polish community, transplanted from tiny, impoverished Hapsburg-ruled villages to a hardscrabble, hardworking, hard-drinking Upstate New York mill town. It’s how the first rust corroded the Rust Belt, sidetracking dreams but not hope. It’s a lively saga of secrets and hard times, of insanity, of manslaughter and murder, of war and postwar, Depression and Recession, racetracks and religions, books and bar rooms, unforgettable personalities and vastly unpronounceable names, of characters and character, of homelessness, of immigration—first to America and then from Rust Belt to Sun Belt—of vices and virtues, and how a sickly, bookwormish boy who loved history and the presidents finally discovered a national pastime and made it his own. Meet Too Long Ago’s mesmerizing cast of characters: Depression-ravaged Felix and Agnes Marek, Corporal Danny Pietrusza and his wartime adventures, Uncle Tony Lenczewski and his raided saloon, brutal serial-killer Lemuel Smith, the high-kicking weather-prophet “Cousin George” Casabonne, carpet heiress and OSS operative Gertie Sanford, caught behind-enemy-lines Mary Zaklukiewicz, and the homeless (but not hopeless) Uncle Leo Zack. Alternately sharp-edged and warm-hearted—sometimes shocking and always surprising—Too Long Ago is a poignant tour-de-force, a no-stopping-for-breath, coming-of-age narrative, akin to cross-breeding Jean Shepherd’s boisterous A Christmas Story with Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Russo’s gritty semi-autobiographical novel Mohawk (set mere miles from Too Long Ago) and presenting the genre-bending result in the mesmerizing form of a decidedly non-WASPY rendition of an epic Spalding Gray monolog.

The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.

Not Too Long Ago is back by popular demand in this newly revised and expanded edition! In this volume, today's senior citizens talk about some of the more exciting and memorable moments of their lives growing up in Newfoundland and Labrador. Read these richly detailed biographies, and meet: Charlie Bown -- Bell Island Miner Arthur Clarke -- Ambulance Driver Howard Elliott -- Big Game Outfitter Margaret Giovannini -- Outport Nurse Gordon Lannon -- Train Conductor Howard Lethbridge -- Trapper Jack May -- Lighthouse Keeper Frank Mercer -- Newfoundland Ranger Florence Michelin -- Grenfell Nurse George Snow -- Lumberman Hubert Waterman -- Twillingate Fisherman Millie Young -- Port au Port Midwife . . . and many more who share experiences from various walks of life: true stories of shipwrecks and sailors, moonshine and home remedies, the seal fishery, the 1959 Badger riot, and young men and women who survived the 1929 Burin tidal wave, who cooked on the Labrador, and who marched off to war.