"Вуди Гасри. Bound for glory (engl)" - читать интересную книгу автора

'Cause them guys is a singin' that this train is bound for glory, an'
I'm gonna hug her breast till I find out where she's bound.






Chapter II
EMPTY SNUFF CANS

Okemah, in Creek Indian, means 'Town on a Hill," but our busiest hill
was our Graveyard Hill, and just about the only hill in the country that you
could rest on. West of town, the wagon roads petered themselves out chasing
through some brushy sand hills. Then south, the country just slipped away
and turned into a lot of hard-hit farms, trying to make an honest living in
amongst the scatterings of scrub oak, black jack, sumac, sycamore, and
cottonwood that lay on the edges of the tough hay meadows and stickery
pasture lands.
Okemah was an Oklahoma farming town since the early days, and it had
about an equal number of Indians, Negroes, and Whites doing their trading
there. It had a railroad called the Fort Smith and Western--and there was no
guarantee that you'd get any certain place any certain time by riding it.
Our most famous railroad man was called "Boomer Swenson," and every time
Boomer come to a spot along the rails where he'd run over somebody, he'd
pull down on his whistle cord and blow the longest, moaningest, saddest
whistle that ever blew on any man's railroad.
Ours was just another one of those little towns, I guess, about a
thousand or so people, where everybody knows everybody else; and on your way
to the post office, you'd nod and speak to so many friends that your neck
would be rubbed raw when you went in to get your mail if there was any. It
took you just about an hour to get up through town, say hello, talk over the
late news, family gossip, sickness, weather, crops and lousy politics.
Everybody had something to say about something, or somebody, and you usually
knew almost word for word what it was going to be about before you heard
them say it, as we had well-known and highly expert talkers on all subjects
in and out of this world.
Old Windy Tom usually shot off at his mouth about the weather. He not
only could tell you the exact break in the exact cloud, but just when and
where it would rain, blow, sleet or snow; and for yesterday, today, and
tomorrow, by recalling to your mind the very least and finest details of the
weather for these very days last year, two years, or forty years ago. When
Windy Tom got to blowing it covered more square blocks than any one single
cyclone. But he was our most hard-working weather man--Okemah's Prophet--and
we would of fought to back him up.
I was what you'd call just a home-town kid and carved my initials on
most everything that would stand still and let me, W. G. Okemah Boy. Born
1912. That was the year, I think, when Woodrow Wilson was named to be the
president and my papa and mama got all worked up about good and bad politics
and named me Woodrow Wilson too. I don't remember this any too clear.