by Thomas N. Kirkpatrick (Author)
Almost Heaven was originally titled Ballengee. I wrote during the early 80s while driving an eighteen-wheeler across the fruited plain of America and Canada. The characters of Almost Heaven are based on my memories of folks I knew while spending time with my summer parents on the farm in Ballengee, West Virginia. My Summer parents were named Lester and Fonda Lively. Ballengee was a farming and dairy country filled with unique folks. I started going there in 1954 and continued each summer until 1965. I always thought fiction was born of truth, and I filled Ballengee with fictitious characters from impressions of the folks I met there. The storyteller of the work never revealed his name, but if he had, it would have been Ragamuffin. It was a name given to me by Lester when asked who the little boy was hanging around him in the summer. Lester said, "Why, he is my Ragamuffin." Ballengee is a real place, and I turned it into a small town filled with interesting folks who made it Almost Heaven.