Land. It was a pleasant thing to ride across but a demanding thing to own.
Hewey Calloway is a free-roaming cowboy of a different world. The times are Land. It was a pleasant thing to ride across but a demanding thing to own.
Hewey Calloway is a free-roaming cowboy of a different world. The times are quickly changing in 1906 and the older generation is having to come to grips with it all. For our good old boy, Hewey, freedom from the cares of the world are his goal in life. Money has no meaning to him and he sure can’t stand to see all of the fences that keep popping up - putting an end to the meaning of wide open spaces. The idea of owning land and settling down was just not in his blood. He viewed land ownership as a double-edged sword - the land may belong to you but eventually it owns you. It’s a lot of work for not enough return, in Hewey’s view.
He recognized the fence as a necessity for the small settler’s survival, but it was not a thing he could accept without regret at the passing of a freer and more open time. A fence— any way you look at it— was an obstacle. It shut you out or it shut you in.
Hewey’s brother, Walter, gave up the “good old boy” lifestyle of roaming for the farming livelihood. He chose a wife and a homestead where Hewey remained unrestricted and carefree, able and ready to ride off to anywhere he felt like going without anything or anyone holding him back. But Walter has the bank to answer to with the claims on his land and farm holdings. Without a good return on his crop sales to pay them off, he could be left with nothing. Then, Hewey faces the facts that the world and its technologies are passing him up and leaving his old ways behind. His nephews have always looked up to him. Cotton, values the possibilities of the future and that includes his fascination with automobiles. His brother, Tommy has farming in his blood though. But Hewey’s ability to make up yarns without thinking of the consequences to the boys might just bring him down the pedestal they’ve put him on.
Hewey has a lot to reckon with aside from the fact that his brother and sister in law want him to settle down and make a living like everybody else. He still has feelings like everyone else and a sensitive side that just touches your heart. He gives readers many opportunities to laugh out loud. Kelton’s succinct prose is perfectly matched to provide humorous anecdotes and wry and witty sayings right out of Hewey’s mouth. He doesn’t always hold back. Hewey Calloway is such a breath of fresh air and one character that I won’t soon forget.
The way Hewey saw it, the Lord had purposely made every person different. He could not understand why so many people were determined to thwart the Lord’s work by making everyone the same.
”Lots of people talk about what the Lord wants. Wonder how many has ever asked Him?”
I always like God better when I found Him outdoors. He always seemed too big to fit into a little-bitty cramped-up church house. ...more
First, I must offer thanks to those who made it possible for me to read this book: Thanks to Dave Marsland, Diane Barnes and Sara Steger for keeping tFirst, I must offer thanks to those who made it possible for me to read this book: Thanks to Dave Marsland, Diane Barnes and Sara Steger for keeping the book alive! And Howard who brought it to our attention in the first place. All of their reviews are worth checking out.
Life could not be any harder than it was or money more scarce.
This is a novel that is hardly known and should be known by everyone. Written in 1939 by a woman who was just edged out on the publication of her novel by John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, Sanora Babb had a masterpiece in her hands and the world wouldn’t know about it until it was finally published in 2004. This novel demonstrates the plight of the farmers who tried and failed to farm on the high plains of Oklahoma in land that was so unforgiving. These families withstood the droughts and the dust storms that occurred during the Great Depression and Babb writes with her first hand experience.
In this story, the Dunne family live a life of drudgery and hardship with no way to fight the natural disasters that wipe out their hopes and dreams - simple things like building a house of their own and having enough food to eat. Try as they might, the Dunnes are barely making ends meet when they are forced to abandon their land and head west to California where they expect to find a glorious promised land of blooming crops and green valleys and plenty of work and food for everyone. What they find is a place overrun by people just like them - destitute and starving refugees looking for work and living in tents or their cars hoping for a break that will help them feed their families. Many are immigrants but all are hardworking men and women who just need to work in order to survive. Their lives become migratory as they move from place to place picking peaches, prunes, apricots, cotton, etc. They discover a flawed system in which ‘those who have’ lord their power and status over ‘those who have nothing’.
In the last few years they had learned how to do without things they always considered necessities in other days. Maybe you wouldn’t call it hunger, he thought, but it’s a kind of left-handed starvation in more ways than one.
Babb’s novel is thankfully becoming more known and I hope that it will continue to spread its recognition. This is an important piece of history written by one who knew poverty. She was able to pack a big punch of themes into this slim novel - natural disasters, greed of banks and corporations, misuse and exploitation of workers. By the end, readers understand that men and women want to live lives with dignity.
A conversation with grandpa:
”Do you know everything, Konkie?”
“Not by a long shot! If I did I wouldn’t be in the fix I am.”
“Maybe when we grow up we can find out how to fix you,” Myra said.
“Maybe so. Maybe so. Maybe you can fix the world. It’s out of joint somewheres.”
“Maybe if it was fixed there wouldn’t be any poor people like us.”...more
What a wonderful blast from my past to pick up this first book in the series written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. My favorite TV show when I was little waWhat a wonderful blast from my past to pick up this first book in the series written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. My favorite TV show when I was little was Little House on the Prairie. I wanted to be Laura Ingalls! I lived vicariously through her as I watched her life portrayed on my TV and just thought how awesome it would have been to live on the prairie with the Ingalls family.
This is written perfectly for a pre-teen, tween age about her life growing up in the pioneer times in Wisconsin. This is such a beautiful story of a loving family who always works and plays together. We see a year in the life of the Ingalls’ family and get to look in on their daily lives. Ma and Pa Ingalls and their 3 daughters, Mary, Laura and Carrie live in a log cabin in the middle of the Big Woods. This was a time and a lifestyle so different from today. Food must be grown and meat must be hunted. Clothes were made and everything was useful. Pa playing his fiddle before they went to bed and the girls begging him to tell them stories is so reminiscent of a simpler time and way of life. I particularly enjoyed reading the scene about Mary and Laura’s dolls:
Mary was bigger than Laura, and she had a rag doll named Nettie. Laura had only a corncob wrapped in a handkerchief, but it was a good doll. It was named Susan. It wasn't Susan's fault that she was only a corncob. Sometimes Mary let Laura hold Nettie, but she did it only when Susan couldn't see.
These are books that I look forward to reading with grandchildren some day. I only remember reading Farmer Boy to my boys when they were little. I wish I had read them all to them. What wonderful conversations we could have had about pioneer living. I own all of these books and will look forward to the day (when I have grandchildren) when I can share some of my favorite books with a new generation!...more
What an apt book to pick up and read when Texas is currently in stage 3 drought right now. It has been such a hot and dry summer and the land is reallWhat an apt book to pick up and read when Texas is currently in stage 3 drought right now. It has been such a hot and dry summer and the land is really, really parched. I don’t know when we will get a good, solid rain but soon would be great. The characters in The Time It Never Rained were constantly waiting for rain to come to ease the burdens and hardships that living in a drought brought to their lives. Texas ranchers and farmers work hard to produce livestock and crops when the conditions are ideal, let alone in a harsh climate that sucks away all life. Elmer Kelton knew what he was writing from his own experiences. When a writer writes what he knows and does it in a way that puts the reader in the midst of the struggles and pain, you know you’ve found a winner. I found this in Elmer Kelton, a west Texan with a heart for the region he claimed as home.
Life still depended on two fundamentals: crops planted by the hand of men and grass planted by the hand of God. Give us rain, they said at Rio Seco, and it makes no difference who is in the White House.
This novel’s central focus is on a seven year drought in west Texas during the 1950’s. Charlie Flagg is the indomitable, principled old rancher who believes in working for himself to survive the drought and absolutely refuses to accept any handouts from the government. He stands alone in this community when others stoop to take government aid. He is the voice of warning to his fellow ranchers and farmers to not get too comfortable taking what the officials were offering.
It divides us into selfish little groups, snarlin’ and snappin’ at each other like hungry dogs, grabbing for what we can get and to hell with everybody else. We beg and fight and prostitute ourselves. We take charity and we give it a sweeter name.
Charlie Flagg’s argument against taking federal aid, regardless of how deserving the rancher is and how well intentioned the government claims to be, is that now he’s lost his self-worth and pride in the things that he took care of himself. Charlie values doing his job independently regardless of the hardships and losses that he faces. He expects that HE will see himself through it because he only knows this to be the right way. He is definitely a man of an older dying generation who just won’t accept defeat.
Kelton explores a progression of Anglo-Mexican relationships in a way that is truly enlightening. We meet Lupe Flores and his family who lives on Charlie’s ranch. Lupe oversees the ranch while his son, Manuel, is learning what is right and wrong. Charlie’s old-time ideals which do not hold Mexicans in high regard are questioned and Charlie himself is conflicted about those ancient beliefs because Charlie actually values Lupe and his family.
Elmer Kelton should be in the list of top writers of Western literature with the likes of Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy. He creates rugged and believable characters and places them in a desperate and uncontrollable situation that seems to have no end. We feel the strain upon them and understand their desire for a way out. We sympathize because this is a scenario that happens all too often in Texas. As I write this last sentence, I watch my weather app and hope for any amount of rain to arrive and quench the thirsty land....more
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