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

what she was thinking about. And they told Papa, but he didn't listen. She
used to say to us kids, "We love your Papa, and if anything tries to hurt
him and make him bad and mean, we'll fight it, won't we?" And Roy would jump
up and pound his fist on his chest and say, "I'll fight!" Mama knew how
dangerous the landtrading business was, and she wanted Papa to drop out of
the fighting and the pushing, and settle down to some kind of a better life
of growing things and helping other people to grow. But Papa was a man of
brimstone and hot fire, in his mind and in his fists, and was known all over
that section of the state as the champion of all the fist fighters. He used
his fists on sharks and fakers, and all to give his family nice things. Mama
was that kind of a woman who always looked at a pretty thing and wondered,
"Who had to work to make it? Who owned it and loved it before?"
So our family was sort of divided up into two sides: Mama taught us
kids to sing the old songs and told us long stories about each ballad; and
in her own way she told us over and over to always try and see the world
from the other fellow's side. Meanwhile Papa bought us all kinds of
exercising rods and stretchers, and kept piles of kids boxing and wrestling
out in the front yard; and taught us never and never to allow any earthly
human to scare us, bully us, or run it over us.
Then more settlers trickled West, they said in search of elbow room on
the ground, room to farm the rich topsoil; but, hushed and quiet, they dug
into the private heart of the earth to find the lead, the soft coal, the
good zinc. While the town of people only seventeen miles east of us danced
on their roped-off streets and held solid weeks of loud celebrating called
the King Koal Karnival, only the early roadrunners, the smart oil men, knew
that in a year or two King Koal would die and his body would be burned to
ashes and his long twisting grave would be left dank and dark and empty
under the ground--that a new King would be dancing into the sky, gushing and
spraying the entire country around with the slick black blood of industry's
veins, the oil--King Oil--a hundred times more powerful and wild and rich
and fiery than King Timber, King Steel, King Cotton, or even King Koal.
The wise traders come to our town first, and they were the traders who
had won their prizes at out-trading thousands of others back where they come
from: oil slickers, oil fakers, oil stakers, and oil takers. Papa met them.
He stood up and swapped and traded, bought and sold, got bigger, spread out,
and made more money.
And this was to get us the nice things. And we all liked the prettiest
and best things in the store windows, and anything in the store was Clara's
just for signing her name, Roy's just for signing his name, or Mama's just
for signing her name-- and I knew how proud I felt of our name, that just to
write it on a piece of paper would bring more good things home to us. This
wasn't because there was oil in the wind, nor gushers thrashing against the
sky, no--it was because my dad was the man that owned the land--and whatever
was under that land was ours. The oil was a whisper in the dark, a rumor, a
gamble. No derricks standing up for your eye to see. It was a whole bunch of
people chasing a year or two ahead of a wild dream. Oil was the thing that
made other people treat you like a human, like a burro, or like a dog.
Mama thought we had enough to buy a farm and work it ourselves, or at
least get into some kind of a business that was a little quieter. Almost
every day when Papa rode home he showed the signs and bruises of a new fist