This book is a collection of oral history interviews describing life in Cary, North Carolina. The book spans the period before the Civil War until today, but it is mostly centered in the mid-twentieth century. Thirty seven narrators tell rich stories about growing up, going to school, going to church, farming and other work endeavors, medicine, and entertainments; in general, life in a small town where the school was the center of the community. They describe how they survived world and national historic events, and what they contributed to the causes. And they explain how their small town led the state and the nation in education, and later in the civil rights movement.