Review---"Houston The Bayou City"

"Houston The Bayou City" by David G. McComb
This is a book that gives the straight forward history of Houston, Texas. It is a quick read, interesting, and entertaining. The biggest draw back to this book is it was published in 1968. Houston has obviously grown and made changes since then. The writer gives a full history from its pioneer outpost days until 1968. At the time the book was published the Houston Astrodome had only been open a couple of years, this was Houston's newest gem.
My dad worked and retired from Tenneco Oil Company in Houston, in the beginning years it was named Tennessee Gas and Transmission. The company was formed in 1944, and in 1966 it claimed 1 billion in revenue. My dad said he remembered that time and that the company celebrated. My dad went to work for Tenneco in 1958, and he retired in early 1985. Most of those years he worked in the Tenneco building in downtown Houston. For a few years he worked in the Post Oak area of Houston.
Houston was a focal point in the oil industry. Oil was struck near Beaumont on January 10, 1901. This place was called the Spindletop.
Shell Oil moved its offices to Houston in 1933. In the year 1930 there were 8 refineries on the ship channel.
Businesses were created and flourished in making drill bits, and other oil refinery machinery and tools. One of the more famous businesses was "Hughes Tool Company." The company is more famously known by the original and now deceased owner Howard Hughes Jr. the Hollywood producer and eccentric wealthy man. I can still hear my mother tell me in referring to him, "you know he doesn't take a bath or cut his nails." My mother was always horrified by this.
Even though I was born in 1964 in Houston, Texas and raised there until I was 21. I knew very little about the history of Houston. I must say I am proud of my Houston heritage, and I am always proud to be a Texan!

Review---"Daily Life In The United States 1920-1940"

"Daily Life In The United States 1920-1940" by David E. Kyvig
This is a great book that gives detailed information on "real" life in the time period of 1920-1940.
The book talks about prohibition, infant mortality rate, Jim Crow laws of segregation, the social security act, daily living expenses, average job salaries, education, books, music and radio, movies, home appliances that were used, automobiles, sports, clothing, grocery stores and other shopping, and the social culture of young people.
I loved reading about the variances of the hemline of dresses in the years right after WWI. The hemline was at the ankle, then moved up to the knee during the early 1920's, then in the 1930's the hemline lowered back to the mid calf. Women who had had long hair and kept in a bun, suddenly cut their hair in to a bob during the 1920's. The women that cut their hair short were declaring their independence, and their right to shorten their hair if they chose to. Hygiene became a bigger concern after WWI, there was commercial advertisement about body odor and bad breath. Bra sizes first appeared in the 1930's. Women began to wear sheer stockings as opposed to dark stockings, and the necessity to shave became popular. Many of the recruitment's of WWI did not score well on their aptitude tests, the push for better education and for children to stay in school longer emerged. Teacher's who before WWI might have only had a high school education were now to have a college degree.
It is still hard for me to understand the segregation that took place. Asians were mainly on the west coast, the Hispanics were mainly in the southwest, 85% of African Americans lived in the south. We now live in an era that cultural diversity is nearly everywhere.

Review---"Riding A Novel," Volume I

"Riding A Novel, Volume I" by H. S. Cross

513 pages

Riding is the name of the main character, Gray Riding. He is a young adolescent boy living in a boarding school in England in the early 1930's. He is intelligent, precocious, lonely at times, mischievous (typical of this age.) He and his friends often engage in pranks, and they suffer the disciplines of the teachers. In to the story is weaved characters that are mysterious, carry heavy loads of guilt and or sorrow, and their stories are also brought to light amongst the dark and sullen atmosphere of northern England. Gray Riding meet Cordelia Lioht, she is a young girl with her own coming of age and family trials. They are drawn to each other, neither fully understanding what the other is going through, and yet there is a bond.

The author H. S. Cross has a rare talent for flowing, rhythmic writing; the fluidity is like poetry. The descriptions perfectly bring to life the story for the reader. There is a bit of a mystery to the storyline, or it could just be the Yorkshire atmosphere of the boarding school. Often I was reminded to the similarity of a Victorian novel, but yet a modern tone is set. Dispersed often throughout the novel is old English hymns and poetry.

The novel is long at 513 pages, and could be considered intimidating to some. The dialogue between the characters must be read carefully in order to not become lost in the story. It is several pages before a list of common words are defined for the reader, I felt this should have been placed before the story began. There is slang curse words shared between some of the boy's in the boarding school, only a few instances was it rough. If those words had been omitted, nothing would be missed. There are a couple of adult situations, that I am still unclear on. I am unclear about them because "it" is only alluded to, never approached directly for me to understand. Since I am unclear on them, and the author has not explained yet to me, I will not elaborate further.

I will end this review with a few quotes from the book to give you a hint of the beautiful writing!

"I see sodden ewes sheltering new lambs against the constant water."

"In the fog there was no border between sleep and wakefulness."

"....adrift in a gray sea of boys rushing to meet the day."

"inside her little desk dwelt a community with its own architecture."

Review---"The Noble Generation Volume II"

"The Noble Generation Volume II" by Stephen F. and Joan R. Neubauer

This book is a collection of short stories chronicling the lives of various people that lived during The Great Depression and the years of World War II. Each story is less than 4 pages, written by both men and women, all of the writer's are Texans.
I loved this book and have read aloud many of the stories to my own dad, who experienced both of these time periods. Some of the stories made me laugh aloud, many of them moved me to tears. The stories are haunting; they were palpable life experiences that were filled with tragedy, fear, grief, betrayal, loneliness, and desperation. Several of the stories that were shared in the pages of this book were the only written memoirs for their families. The stories take the reader back in time to a world without cable TV, Internet, cell phones, and in many instances no telephone or electricity. It was a time when instead of being entertained by a television set, families sat on their front porches, or around their dinner tables, and told stories that were from their own lives or their parents lives. It was a time that developed a great resolve and perseverance in people.
I am thankful that my dad has freely shared stories from his life with me, many of the stories I have written down on paper, some are tape recorded.
I can remember as a little girl sitting with my own mother at her parents dinner table, and listening to her and my maternal grandparents, tell stories of their youth. I remember their stories of the house dances that my grandparents went to, the hard life of farm work, cotton picking, flour sack dresses, delivering a baby in your own bed at home without a doctor, childhood diseases that we now have immunizations for, and the fear of an empty food pantry. The first house my grandparents lived in after they married was a new chicken house (I still have strange visions on that story.) My maternal grandfather almost always had at least 2 jobs, during the depression years he worked at the Houston Cotton Mill making thread. Later he worked at a refinery, and then as an electrician, and after retirement a janitor at a school. My maternal grandmother never learned to drive, nor ride a bicycle. She did not see the inside of a grocery store until the 1940's, my grandfather had previously done all of the shopping. Grandmother walked where she needed to go. If someone gave her a ride in their car she would use the term "they carried me to the store." My grandmother finished the 10Th grade, my grandfather finished the 2ND grade. Both of my grandparents were proud when their son, my uncle, graduated with several degrees from college. My grandfather did not have a retirement plan, nor investments, but they worked hard all of their lives and saved.
I wish I could turn back time to hear those stories again; their melodic laughter, my grandfather doing a jig and grandmother clapping her hands to rhythm of his dancing, the smell of sausage frying from the basement where my grandfather had a separate kitchen set up, the flaky mouthwatering biscuits my grandmother made in the big cast iron skillet, and to taste again that prize winning melt in your mouth chocolate cream pie.

Review: America In The 1930's

"America In The 1930's"
by Jim Callan

128 pages

This book is the first in a long list of other books I will be reading on The Great Depression.
This book I found on my trip to the library yesterday, it is considered a young adult reader book; but I felt it gave a very good and concise view of the 1930's and The Great Depression. The book touches on many factors that made up the 1930's: general life, movies and radio shows, the music, the presidents that held office during this time, the chain of events that caused the collapse of Wall Street and the stock exchange that led to The Great Depression, the plight of the farmers, the growing threat of Hitler in Germany, the Spanish war, the dust storms that plagued the heart of America, the people that left in mass to California, and the laws and acts that were passed during this time.
I enjoyed reading this book, it was a great stepping off point on my Great Depression challenge.

Review: Lovely is the Rose

"Lovely is the Rose, A Scented Anthology
by Celia Haddon

96 pages




I think this is a lovely book, there are pictures of paintings of roses and other flowers arranged artfully throughout the book. The vibrant and beautiful pictures are so lovely that often I caught myself trying to smell the pages.
There are poems in the book with the theme of roses, written by: Thomas Carew, John Keats, Isaac Watts, John Gay, Emily Dickinson, John Gerard, George Eliot, Robert Burns, William Cowper, Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Blake, Christian Rossetti, and others.

Ode To Spring

"My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams." Abram L. Urban

"Butterflies are self propelled flowers." R H Heinlein

"Happiness is a butterfly which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly may alight upon you." Nathaniel Hawthorne

"If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome." Anne Bradstreet

"The year's at the spring
And the day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn:
God's in His heaven
All's right with the world!"
Robert Browning

"An altered look about the hills;
A Tyrian light the village fills;
A wider sunrise in the dawn;
A deeper twilight on the lawn;
A print of a vermilion foot;
A purple finger on the slope;
A flippant fly upon the pane;
A spider at his trade again;
An added strut in chanticleer;
A flower expected everywhere;
An axe shrill singing in the woods;
Fern-odors on untravelled roads,-
All this, and more I cannot tell,
A furtive look you know as well,
And Nicodemus' mystery
Receives its annual reply."
Emily Dickinson