Skating on Skim Ice: The Life and Times of Richard Andrew Gartee

Dick Gartee is a time traveler who has journeyed ninety-three years from the past-one day at a time.

During the Great Depression, the only hockey puck in the neighborhood slides onto thin skim-ice and nine-year-old Dick heroically skates after it. When his father leaves his mother for another woman, plucky thirteen-year-old Dick takes a night job in a bakery to help his mother make ends meet. At seventeen, with World War II raging, he enlists in the Navy and rises from gunner mate to payroll and disbursements. By age twenty, the Navy trusts him with two million dollars cash. In the post-war years, he teaches himself engineering, builds factories, and designs manufacturing production lines and industrial robots.

Elements of daily life that seemed ordinary to Dick are inconceivable to young people today. His biography provides context for key transformative eras of America’s recent past as Dick faces tribulations and joys with morality, humor, and humility.

Younger readers will be astonished to learn how people managed before smartphones while older generations will smile as they recall anecdotes their parents shared. But no matter your age, you will be charmed by Dick’s story, and maybe you will discover some things you didn’t already know.