It's the 1920s. Airships, Prohibition, Al Capone, talkies, gramophones, the Empire State building: the world across the pond is bursting with excitement and the future is wide open for two small boys at home on their North Wales farm. Eagerly they follow the progress of their father, famous Welsh tenor Jabez Trevor, as he tours North America with the Welsh Imperial Singers.
Despite talk of bulls, bears and stock-market crashes, the Depression means little to young brothers Alun and Arthur as they carve their initials into the sycamore tree below Hope Mountain, read Mark Twain and long to see the great ships that will bring their father home.
Eighty years on, Alun recalls those early days with a joyful immediacy in this haunting, music-filled memoir of a time long gone, but still glowing with life.
Alun Trevor had a Welsh country upbringing during the 1920s in Treuddyn, a coal-mining and farming village south of Mold, Flintshire. His father was a miner who became a professional singer. Alun volunteered for the RAF in 1940 and began five and half years of military service, including postings in the Middle East. After the war he taught in schools across the UK and in the Eastern USA.
Since retiring in 1980, his main interests have been with the Clwyd Family History Society and the Chester Welsh Society. His bilingual publication Cofio Cantorion The Welsh Imperial Singers, telling the story of their tour of Britain and North America, was published in 1991 at the time of the Mold National Eisteddfod. He has written widely on historical matters for a magazines and journals including Y Faner and Ninnau.