Description
Once again, through a boy's eyes, Ralph Jackson sees a winter sky darkened with geese and ducks, a kitchen stove glowing with cheerful warmth, Aunt May strolling in her flower garden, moonlight filtering through treetops to cast patches of white light on a sandy woodland road.
Again he catches odors once so familiar: of a mysterious attic, of burning salt grass in late summer, of mountain streams with their fresh green smell, of dark-roast coffee and of slab bacon sizzling in the pan.
He hears again a panther's scream from the darkness surrounding a campfire, the scampering of mice across the barnloft floor, the sigh of a felled pine tree changing to a crashing roar as it meets the ground, the sounds of a meal in preparation, the hum of a mosquito swarm rising from the marshes.
He remembers the taste of barbecued goat, the sweet sharpness of peppermint candy, the flavor of gumdrops from the country store-where, as showcase neighbors of cigars and chewing tobacco, they acquired a faint tobacco taste.
And he feels again the welcome shock of frigid spring water on a hot perspiring body, the pleasant sensation of sand between his toes, the breathtaking exhilaration of swinging on a sapling top.
The joy of childhood on an East Texas ranch is the subject of this book: exciting events like the arrival of the first norther of the season, swimming with alligators, hogkilling, building tree houses, roundup, hunting and fishing, calf-riding, fording strange streams. Interspersed among these episodes are others of darker mood: a smallpox epidemic, the burning of the ranch house, wolves attacking the cattle.
Jackson's characters come alive. Scenes are vivid; moods are various and enveloping. The author has told the delightful story of his boyhood from a highly personal yet universal perspective, and in doing so he has presented a picture of a region of the state previously largely neglected in Texas literature.
Author: Ralph Semmes Jackson
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 01/01/1961
Pages: 156
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.53lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.37d
ISBN13: 9780292757424
ISBN10: 0292757425
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Personal Memoirs
- History | United States | State & Local | Southwest (AZ, NM, OK, TX)
About the Author
Ralph Semmes Jackson (1909-1963), a native of Galveston, was a consulting geophysicist in Beeville, Texas.