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In recent months, worries of recession have slipped at times into fears of depression. Investor angst is apparent in the Dow's yo-yo ride. People wonder if the economic calamity of the 1930s is happening again.

Amid this environment comes a book by retired newspaper editor James Wyman called "Bittersweet Beginnings, A Sketchbook of a Great Depression Boyhood," put out by Plaidswede Publishing of Concord, N.H.

It recalls Wyman's experiences growing up in the Marshall's Corner section Brockton. (His family eventually move to Taunton, and he went on to a career in journalism.)

In looking back at his early years in 1930s Brockton, Wyman recalls a bleak economic time.

"Unemployment was about 25 percent. Banks closed all around us. People lost every penny they saved. Bills accumulated so fast they couldn't keep up. People lived day to day, didn't dare look beyond. People were in absolute despair," he said. Wyman seldom saw his parents smile or laugh, and his family lost their home in 1935.

He never imagined that he would again hear talks of another Depression strangling his country.

"I figured that was the end. It remains to be seen how it (the current economic crisis) will play out," he said, though he noted that experts are saying the downturn won't reach the severity of the Great Depression because of built-in protections.

"At the time of the Great Depression (there were) no safeguards, very little regulation," he said.

Wyman's book is a nostalgic journey written by a man with a hardy spirit. The years were formidable ones.

"Kids in those times came face to face with adversity," he said. "They were given some real hard lessons in life early on. We came away learning about life, maybe too fast."

Life's cruelty was only one part of the lesson, however. Wyman tempers stories of hardship with treasured memories.

"Life was the hardest and, at times, the happiest in many ways," he said.

It was a time of great friendships, close family, fun and antics.

"I look back not with regret, but with satisfaction of how we made it through," Wyman said. "While the Depression hindered us, it never overwhelmed us. We were able to meet the challenges and survive." "Bittersweet Beginnings" is a collection of 23 essays. Marshall's Corner, once a rural section of Brockton next to South Easton, has since lost to development. The area possessed a natural, never-ending opportunity for childhood adventure: open fields, woods, streams and a mill pond.

"There was fun out there to be had. We took it where it could be found," Wyman said.

Wyman's book recalls many fond memories of the people and things that inhabited Marshall's Corner, and the many adventures he experienced. There was, for example, the time he and friends formed their own fire brigade and lit the fire "necessary" for them to do their jobs.

He remembers his great uncle Gaylord, who set off to search for gold in the hinterlands of the United States. He writes about climbing the fence to get into the Brockton Fair while sympathetic policemen looked the other way.

And he introduces readers to peddlers and tradesmen who sold everything from fruit to fowl. The most important item they offered, however, may not have been their wares, but their conversation and gossip.

"There was a friendliness about those exchanges. They were social, not just business encounters," Wyman said, adding that life then was "slower paced ... more personal."

"You met people, you talked with people. There was a far more personal touch than you find today."

The closeness to nature was also special to Wyman. We were "curious about what flew and grew around us," he said, adding that he doesn't see young people today "having the kind of experience we did."

"They don't take a walk in the woods to see what they can find or see. They miss that kind of independent exposure to life and nature," he said, attributing the problem in part to adults bent on structuring their children's lives.

Rough economic times for Wyman's family improved for good in October 1939 when his father took a new position with a regional trucking company.

Wyman later served in the Army in the South Pacific and then attended Boston University on the G.I. Bill. He began his journalism career at the Taunton Daily Gazette and soon after took a job with the Providence Journal. He worked at the Journal for 44 years, retiring in 1995 as vice president and executive editor.

ALEX SPEREDELOZZI is an intern at The Sun Chronicle and is pursuing a master's degree at the Harvard Extension School. He can be contacted at asperedelozzi@hotmail.com.