Sharon Love, age 69, is a retired agricultural worker who has lived in Northeast Arkansas for almost seven decades.
The Simple Times
Lafferty, Arkansas in the early 1950s, was a small, southern town how many would imagine it to be. Sharon Love, who was raised in Lafferty, was interviewed on October 9th, 2016. There were nine questions asked that lead to many more answers. The following are the questions, and the answers that were given during the interview.
The first question that was asked was, “Were you born in Arkansas? How long ago?” She replied with, “69 years ago in a small town known as Lafferty.” She proceeded to describe what Lafferty was like after being asked. “It was a small community with a grocery store and post office together,
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“We were very poor, but we didn’t realize it because everyone else was too. I was born in 1947 and grew up in the fifties which was an awesome time to grow up. It was safe and free time that. You didn’t have to worry about things people worry about now. We had no television or AC but I remember my first radio. We were lucky to live next to the creek because we left the windows up and it would get so cool out. Everyone loved to swim in the creek during the Summer. It was just a great time to grow up in, even if I didn’t realize it …show more content…
“You were happy with what you had, it was free, and just a good, exciting time.” She mentioned how she would love to just sit down and take time to write everything down that she remembers about that time. The tenth and final question was, “What is the best part of living in northeast Arkansas now?” “It’s easier to do more now. Now we have electric heat instead of a wood stove. I was almost grown when my grandma switched from a wood stove to a gas stove. The cars are better, and we have all of these new technologies. Roads are paved now. I don’t think the road from Cave City to Strawberry was paved. Highway 230 wasn’t paved until after I got married. I moved to Cave City in 1971 and lived here ever since.” She finished with a
The only thing I knew for sure was my mother did not see me going into the mine.”. ( Hickam 14 ) Elsie believes that Sonny is better than to go into the mines. She believes that he is too good and too smart for the mines. But, Homer Hickam Sr believes that he should go into the mines like he did. Elsie doesn’t give up and tries to do everything she can so Sonny can get the future he wants. Elsie believes in getting a better future and not wasting it on mining. She values education and becoming something. Sonny wants to build rockets so she will support his decision and help him with that. “You've got to get out of coal wood, Sonny,’ Mom said, ‘Jimmy will go. Football get him out. I'd like to see him a doctor, or a dentist, something like that. But football with him out of Coalwood, and then he can go and be anything he wants to be”. ( Hickam 50 ) Sonny’s mom knows that Coalwood withholds people from reaching their full potential. She believes that anywhere but Coalwood would be better for both of children to
Family life was hard and time-consuming, during the 1930’s. Loretta Lynn, born the first child of her seven siblings in 1932. Her parents, Ted and Clara Webb, raised the family in Butcher Holler, Kentucky. During this time, Loretta and her family budgeted tightly, sharing the countries financial crisis. Centered around Butcher Holler, Kentucky, the movie depicted insights what coal mining families experienced do the little they had. The movie showed many houses made of wood and mud. This parallel Loretta states “it was a very nice and insolated house, but annual repairs were mandatory” (Loretta Lynn 34). This financial struggle pointed to the “coal mining operation; affected by the British companies invested coal in the Unites States companies” (European Union para. 1). Not receiving a higher pay due the massive production of coal mining, families were tight resource users. Even the film portrayed a scene shows the Webb family getting brand new pairs of shoes and the excitement they had. One song that Loretta wrote, she said they only got one pair of shoes a year. Kids went the summer without shoes, and getting new ones when winter approached. However, even though the Webb...
A. Creech accounted for many memories during her early childhood years. She took many trips with her parents and four siblings. She enjoyed the company of others and making memories. Often, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and friends visited her and her family, making her always used to warm, large, extended family. Her favorite memories came from Creech’s traditional summer vacations to various destinations. She loved road tripping with her “noisy and rowdy family” across the country. Her never-forgotten memories eventually led to her recreation of the trip into many of her books.
After reading the poem entitled “Youth”, I felt that James Wright was not only describing the life of his father but also the lives of the many other factory workers in the Ohio Valley. Many of these workers had either dropped out of school or went straight to the factories after high school, never really getting a chance to enjoy their lives as young `````adults. I think that has something to do with the title of this poem. It’s clear that Wright knew his father and the other men were not satisfied with their jobs and just chose not to speak about it. These factory workers slaved away and then came home “quiet as the evening” probably because they were content to just be relaxing at home with their families. They knew that this was their way of life and they had to do it, even if they had big dreams to someday get away. I think that Wright was also trying to make a point that these men who worked so hard every day were not valued as much as they should have been. These men did not have the education to get a higher paying job but they did have the proper skills and knowledge to work in the factories. I like that James Wright mentioned Sherwood Anderson in this poem as I enjoy his work. Anderson left his Ohio hometown for Chicago to pursuit bigger and better things because he knew if he stayed in the area, he would be unhappy. However, it is a little ironic that Anderson one day just got up and left in the middle of writing and was said to have a mental breakdown.
The trip to Brooklyn didn’t turn out the way I expected this morning. I went back to Brooklyn looking for the life I had left when I went to college. My father, the Judge Albert Cohn of the New York State Supreme Court always wanted me to go away and find a life outside of Brooklyn. It meant a lot to him to have his only child to go out of Brooklyn and continue what he called his judge’s legacy. However, I always miss what I had left. Life for me has been a struggle since I became an aide for Senator Joseph McCarthy. I’m an American patriot and my job those days was to prove to the country that the State Department was full of communist infiltrators, but the Senator and I had become what the Communists and Liberals call "discredited." The Senator influence in the country’s politics had decline but my influence is still strong. I didn’t fade away as he did. I always wanted to walk the streets that I walked when I was a child one more time to reassure myself that the struggle had been worth it. I yearn when I’m alone to feel again the joy I felt when I walked by the big houses of Rugby Road on my way home after school. Walking those streets one more time, I wanted to feel Brooklyn the way it felt to me then. Like a magical kingdom. Like the Jews in the promise land after wandering in the desert for forty years. Time seems to stretch endlessly on those days; ten minutes felt more as an hour and summer felt like the whole year. Nevertheless, this time, it hadn’t worked out that way to me. The magic feeling that felt as a boy looking at those houses from the sidewalk was no longer there. It seems that my clock had stared working right again. A minute was a minute and an hour was sixty minutes as it was everywhere else. Tick, tick, tick... tick. I couldn’t stretch time again or at least not today.
The poem also focuses on what life was like in the sixties. It tells of black freedom marches in the South how they effected one family. It told of how our peace officers reacted to marches with clubs, hoses, guns, and jail. They were fierce and wild and a black child would be no match for them. The mother refused to let her child march in the wild streets of Birmingham and sent her to the safest place that no harm would become of her daughter.
“I grew up on powdered milk and ate tons of potatoes, though to be honest, I never noticed how poor we really were until I was old enough to take an honest appraisal of things. Even
Marie’s grandparent’s had an old farm house, which was one of many homes in which she lived, that she remembers most. The house was huge, she learned to walk, climb stairs, and find hiding places in it. The house had a wide wrap around porch with several wide sets of stairs both in front and in back. She remembers sitting on the steps and playing with one of the cats, with which there was a lot of cats living on the farm...
Alex Kotlowitz was a freelance journalist. In 1985 a friend came to him and asked him to write a text for a photo essay he was doing on (children living in poverty) for a Chicago magazine. That is when he met the Rivers brothers, Lafeyette, age ten, and Pharoah age seven. He spent only a few hours with them interviewing for the photo essay. Lafeyette had an impact on Kotlowitz. When asked what he wanted to be, Lafeyette responded with "If I grow up, I'd like to be a bus driver." Meaning, at ten years old, he wasn't sure if he'd make it to adulthood. In 1988 Kotlowitz suggested to the boys' mother, LaJoe, the idea of writing a book about Pharoah, Lafeyette and the other children in the neighborhood. LaJoe liked the idea. However, she then said, "But you know, there are no children here. They've seen too much to be children."
He starts off by stating there are contradictions that lay within the nation. He explains that before the war, the country was living oppressed and the motives for the war was equality and freedom for all. When he says “ But that days has happily
Finally the coal mine war ended in 1933, many dead bodies were buried of innocent people, with many untold stories. The emotions Diane fisher used in her lyrical poetry can be relate to any of the culture, not only to the people of West Virginia. It’s a responsibility of the poet to give his readers entertainment, but at the same time the information about what they are talking. She did a great job in this. She not only told us the situation of miserable people, but also helped us to heard the untold stories.
The poem, “Sex without Love” by Sharon Old’s is a unique poem with a distinctive message that you cannot help but read it over again. Old’s poem is about the narrators opinion about the act of sexual intercourse and how the narrator does not know how a human being can share such an intimate moment with someone, without loving the other individual wholeheartedly. In the poem, “Sex without Love” by Sharon Old’s images of numerous people in various activities create tension as the narrator asks, “How do they do it, the ones who make love without love?” Sharon Old’s utilizes numerous religious languages that juxtaposes real beliefs and being a sap. The poem in its entirety is unified by the failure to answer the question, “How do they do it, the ones who make love without love?”.
Everyone has a past. Some people embrace their mistakes while others crumble and hide behind theirs. While someone’s past might affect their future, it will not determine the person they are. There is no age, height, gender, or race requirements for error, but a variety of religions, especially Christianity, emphasize this standard. In the poem “Sex without Love” by Sharon olds, the concept of religion is used to constantly remind the audience of the speaker’s attitude about sex before marriage. Although the religious speaker in this poem is confused and insulted by the actions of fornicator’s, she utilizes the bible as a sarcastic tool instead of judgmental.
The poem “good times” by Lucille Clifton mainly focuses on poverty. Even though my life experience is very similar to that of the narrator, I lived better life than the narrator because my family was in a decent financial situation. My life before I came to the US resembles the life of the person in “good times”. I can completely relate to the lifestyle described by Clifton because my father fulfilled all my needs such as food, room and education and my mother took care of all the family as a very diligent house wife and as a good mother. As we had extended family, my grandfather and grandmother were always there to entertain us and take of us incase our parents were around. All these factors have contributed in me having good times during my childhood. However I was aware of the fact that I could not be depended on my parents forever because they were getting older and I knew I had the obligation to support them when I grow older. In addition, I wanted my children, when I would have them in near future, to live the good times that I lived and to offer them the happiness that I received from my family.
I awoke to the sun piercing through the screen of my tent while stretching my arms out wide to nudge my friend Alicia to wake up. “Finally!” I said to Alicia, the countdown is over. As I unzip the screen door and we climb out of our tent, I’m embraced with the aroma of campfire burritos that Alicia’s mom Nancy was preparing for us on her humungous skillet. While we wait for our breakfast to be finished, me and Alicia, as we do every morning, head to the front convenient store for our morning french vanilla cappuccino. On our walk back to the campsite we always take a short stroll along the lake shore to admire the incandescent sun as it shines over the gleaming dark blue water. This has become a tradition that we do every