Word: barrens
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...barren place surrounded by the lush abundance of California's San Joaquin Valley live the 300 Negro men, women and children of Teviston. Most of the family heads went to the valley from Oklahoma, Texas and Arkansas some 20 years ago as migrant farm workers, pinched their dollars, and with earnest pride bought their own land on a sandy alkali flat and called it home. The neighboring town and country were nourished by huge water projects and irrigation systems. Other valley towns thrived, but Teviston never amounted to much because it had no water supply...
...dirt bunkers built into the hillside 500 ft. above them. Suddenly, the thin, cold mountain air crackled with the discharge of rifles, hand grenades and 2-in. mortars. Scrambling from their rearing ponies, the Indians unslung their .303 rifles and returned the fire. But they were hopelessly trapped: the barren terrain lacked trees or boulders to give them cover, and they were being raked by crossfire. Only five Indians escaped. Nine were killed and ten wounded by the Red Chinese troops who had staged the ambush...
...Tuesday, the incurable optimism always present during any football season, no matter how barren, had returned in almost full strength. The Columbia game was now only four days away; and the team had one of its best practices of the fall. Even the Ivy title was not lost. "If Bob Blackman can say Dartmouth is still in the running after a loss and a tie, then we certainly have a good chance," Haughie says. Ravenel predicts, "The Ivy champion will probably lose two games or so, and someone will beat Penn. We could be the team...
...prison is tucked in a barren bend of the Mississippi, looking toward fields of Louisiana sugar cane. Inside Angola's cyclone fences are the lifers-men serving sentences for rape and murder. Periodically a short man in rumpled suit and bow tie moves into the prison toolroom, lugging a tape recorder, a six-string guitar, a twelve-string guitar and a fiddle. Around him gather the prisoners-"Guitar" Welch, "Hogman" Maxey, Robert Pete Williams-to shout out their songs...
...Devil's Advocate is Monsignor Blaise Meredith, a dry, self-contained English priest whose sense of vocation has been all but choked under the dust of years in Vatican offices. As he sees himself, he is one of God's empty vessels, a decent man barren of human warmth and love. Furthermore, he is dying of cancer, and the thought panics him: "It was his profession to prepare other men for death; it shocked him to be so unready...