| A Personal Country Revised Edition Contributor(s): Greene, A. C. (Author), Nunn, Ancel (Illustrator), Greene, A. C. (Afterword by) |
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ISBN: 1574410539 ISBN-13: 9781574410532 Publisher: University of North Texas Press OUR PRICE: $21.80 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: June 1998 Annotation: Coming up on the thirtieth anniversary of its first publication, this book brings alive what one man feels about his childhood home. The place is West Texas, seen across a long vista in which today's events and people merge with the author's boyhood and young manhood. It is a harsh, remote country, where the weather is always very close and the horizon far away. The Brazos country of long-ago Fourth of July fishing expeditions; the grass-grown remains of a way station of the Butterfield Stage Line; the streets of Abilene; the sparse grazing lands under infinite skies -- all are made resonant by a native son's affection and understanding. It is a way of life -- resilient and persnickety -- that is almost gone. Above all, it is people: the author's grandmother, who had a mortal fear of bridges and whose premonitions of unnamed calamities (that as often as not happened), both alarmed and pleased the young boy; Uncle Aubrey, "who married late"; the blacksmith they awakened in the dead of night to repair the family Maxwell; the familiar neighbors; the rare and deliciously mysterious strangers. With humor and strong, unsentimental feeling, A. C. Greene conserves for us the priceless eccentricities of place and person that are being flattened out -- almost literally bulldozed away -- by the impatient, insatiable onrush of the twentieth century. His West Texas is a very personal country, but what he seeks to share will be familiar to all who take pleasure in the memories that tie them to their own special region of America. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | United States - State & Local - General |
| Dewey: 976.4 |
| LCCN: 98197472 |
| Physical Information: 0.95" H x 5.57" W x 8.43" (1.09 lbs) 360 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Southwest U.S. - Cultural Region - Western U.S. - Geographic Orientation - Texas - Cultural Region - Mid-South - Cultural Region - South |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: This book brings alive what one man feels about his childhood home. The place is West Texas, seen across a long vista in which today's events and people merge with the author's boyhood and young manhood. It is a harsh, remote country, where the weather is always very close and the horizon far away. The Brazos country of long-ago Fourth of July fishing expeditions; the grass-grown remains of a way station of the Butterfield Stage Line; the streets of Abilene; the sparse grazing lands under infinite skies--all are made resonant by a native son's affection and understanding. It is a way of life--resilient and persnickety--that is almost gone. Above all, it is people: the author's grandmother, who had a mortal fear of bridges and whose premonitions of unnamed calamities (that as often as not happened), both alarmed and pleased the young boy; Uncle Aubrey, "who married late"; the blacksmith they awakened in the dead of night; the familiar neighbors; the rare and deliciously mysterious strangers. With humor and strong, unsentimental feeling, A. C. Greene conserves for us the priceless eccentricities of place and person that are being flattened out--almost literally bulldozed away--by the impatient, insatiable onrush of the twentieth century. His West Texas is a very personal country, but what he seeks to share will be familiar to all who take pleasure in the memories that tie them to their own special region of America. |