{"id":8316,"date":"2019-08-09T11:18:15","date_gmt":"2019-08-09T18:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=8316"},"modified":"2019-08-09T11:18:21","modified_gmt":"2019-08-09T18:18:21","slug":"write-your-story-prompt-436","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/write-your-story-prompt-436\/","title":{"rendered":"Write Your Story. Prompt #436"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An article in the Mail\nTribune, Medford, Oregon, September 14, 2006 described how Betty Henshaw wrote\nabout her childhood in the Oklahoma hills and her family\u2019s move to\nCalifornia.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author Sandra Scofield read a\ncollection of Betty\u2019s work and said her history needed to be in the hands of a\nuniversity press. Texas Tech University Press published her story and Betty did\na book tour in 2006.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s an excerpt from that\nnewspaper article. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe family hired an\nauctioneer and sold their cows, horses, pigs, chickens, farm tools, the\npotatoes in the barn and the home-canned fruits and vegetables. Mama kept her\nsewing machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next morning I helped herd the younger children into the truck before first light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daddy and Robert had placed a\nfeather mattress on the pickup bed. The babies crawled to the back, grabbed a\npillow each, and rolled up in quilts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sadness washed over me when\nwe drove past the high school that morning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s an old tradition that\nOkies were supposed to sing and holler when they came over the 3,793 foot\nTehachapi Pass near the south end of the Sierra Nevada. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mama said we were too tired\nto holler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a hardscrabble life.\nLaundry was done with a washboard after heating water in a kettle, and hung on\nan electric fence to dry. Sunday dinners might be beans and cornbread and fried\ngreen tomatoes. My sisters and I wore dresses Mama made of flour sacks on her\nGrandma Bristol\u2019s old Singer sewing machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mama and my grandmother picked cotton to buy that machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today the machine sits in a place of honor in my living room, a piece of the past contrasting with the computer on the desk at the other end of the room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was hard,\u201d Betty says, of leaving Oklahoma, \u201cI left behind a part of myself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prompt: Write about your history, either fact or what you imagine could have happened. Or write about a something you inherited.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article in the Mail Tribune, Medford, Oregon, September 14, 2006 described how Betty Henshaw wrote about her childhood in the Oklahoma hills and her family\u2019s move to California.  Author Sandra Scofield read a collection of Betty\u2019s work and said her history needed to be in the hands of a university press. Texas Tech University […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[1179],"class_list":["post-8316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prompts","tag-writing-prompts-just-write-writing-freely-the-write-spot-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43Dj8-2a8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8316"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8320,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8316\/revisions\/8320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}