Word: big
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Raisin in the Sun. Bob Ussery learned to ride back home in Vian, Okla., a little farming town (green beans, cotton, corn) near the Arkansas border. His father was a clerk in the general store, had five children, a pump and an outhouse; his grandfather had a big black mare named Kate. When he was seven and weighed just 55 Ibs., Ussery was clattering across the Oklahoma flatland, perched like a raisin on the bare back of Kate, and celebrating a win over other mounted kids by riding straight into a water hole, Kate...
...Ussery early learned the value of a buck. Says he: "I always wanted to hoe cotton-those guys got $3 a day. But I wasn't big enough." So Ussery turned instead to picking spinach (10? for every 20 Ibs.). By seventh grade, he knew where easier money lay: "I couldn't ride and go to school too. I quit school...
...Slasher. Sprinting quarter horses over dirt tracks around the Southwest, Ussery learned to get a horse away fast at the start. By 16 he was ready for the thoroughbreds,, drove his first mount to victory in the 1951 Thanksgiving Handicap in New Orleans. Within months Ussery was a big-time jockey, with a reputation as a slasher who bulled his way through the field like a fullback. Ussery used the whip so much that some jockeys hated to mount the horse he had ridden because the animal tended to sulk. Not until last year, when he was set down...
...private gifts, which will make up some 21% of the total cost of higher education in 1969. If gifts flow as freely in the next decade as they do now, the council reported, the U.S. "can and will pay the big bills that are beginning to fall due . . . The nation possesses the means and will provide the support...
Along the Vegas Strip, there are no clocks to worry the gambler about the passing hours, and fur shops stay open until 3 a.m. (a big winner might be in the mood to buy), but it would all get pretty dull without the shows. To hold the customers' attention, the gaudy hotel nightclubs rely on big old names (Sinatra, Dietrich, Tucker), but they also reach out for newcomers. Last week new acts got a big play in the neon-painted desert...