Down in Texas, my gal fainted in the rain,
I throwed a bucket o’ dirt in her face just to bring her back again.
— Woody Guthrie
There is some priceless writing in Woody Guthrie's Bound for Glory (E.P. Dutton, 1943), a book long on literary merit and full of humor, sadness, and rural wisdom. I grew up among Dust Bowl survivors and their offspring in California's central San Joaquin Valley. A year or so ago, when my youngest son, a restless guitar player in his own right, discovered and lent me the book, it was like hearing their voices all over again.
. . . One day my curiosity licked me. I said that I was going to taste a bottle of that Jake* for myself. Man ought to be interested. I drawed up about a half a mug of root beer. It was cold and nice, and I popped the little stopper out of one of the Jake bottles, and poured the Jake into the root beer. When that Jake hit that beer, it commenced to cook it, and there was seven civil wars and two revolutions broke out inside of that mug. The beer was trying to tame the Jake down and the Jake was trying to eat the beer up. They sizzled and boiled and sounded about like bacon frying. The Jake was chasing the little bubbles and the little bubbles was chasing the Jake, and the beer spun like a whirlpool in a big swift river. It went around and around so fast that it made a little funnel right in the middle. I waited about twenty minutes for it to settle down. Finally it was about the color of a new tan saddle, and about as quiet as it would get. So I bent over it and stuck my ear down over the mug. It was spewing and crackling like a machine gun, but I thought I’d best to drink it before it turned into a waterspout or a dust storm. I took it up and took it down, and it was hot and dry and gingery and spicy, and cloudy, and smooth, and windy and cold, and threatening rain or snow. I took another big swallow and my shirt come unbuttoned and my insides burnt like I was pouring myself full of home-made soapy dishwater. I drank it all down, and when I woke up I was out of a job. . . .
*Jamaica Ginger, a potent Prohibition mixture of ginger and alcohol — W.M.
During the past few months, a lot of attention has been given to Jack Kerouac and the fifty-year anniversary of the publication of On the Road, which, of course, is another kind of book altogether. That attention is deserved. But it's worth remembering, I think, that Guthrie and others zigzagged this country in harder times and rougher conditions, and some great art came of it.
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