Word: fathering
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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HARRY CREWS' father worked for seven years in the 1920s building a road through the Everglades; the first part of A Childhood concerns itself with a son imagining what his father, whom he never knew, might have thought about an Indian woman his father had known in the swamps: "He had not wanted her, but they had been in the swamp for three years. They worked around the clock, and if they weren't working or sleeping, their time was pretty much spent drinking or fighting or shooting gators. So since he could not have what he wanted, he tried...
When Crews' father left the swamp to go home to Bacon County, Georgia, he took a little money and a gold watch, inscribed "To Ray Crew, Pioneer Builder of the Tamiami Trail." He left behind a testicle, lost to the raging case of gonorrhea he contracted during their brief and unsatisfactory coupling...
Harry's mother married his father's brother, and things seemed to be getting better again. One day Harry's legs began to tighten up and then they began to draw up, until the backs of his heels touched his buttocks. No one seemed to be able to find out why--including the old faith healer who came by to say a verse from Ezekiel and "I cain't say as I've ever seed laigs jest like them. But them is the Lord's laigs and he's seed them laigs and He's laid His hand on them...
...honey, she was rebelling. She wasn't too happy at her new school, and then her father and I got divorced, and then her dog died, so she just decided to rebel, yessir. She was on the dope line for a while. But she's all straightened out now," adds Weezie's mom, popping a chicken liver canape...
...next morning, nineteen girls and nineteen fathers arrive at the Youngbloods' Club, to hang up their debut gowns and to practice the Presentation in the ballroom. Picking their way among trails of plastic cedar, they listen as a sleepy-eyed Youngblood explains the procedure: the announcer will call out each girl's name; holding a bouquet of white roses, she will then ascend the platform, curtsey to the audience, then march down the hall and latch back onto her father's arm. They run through it once, simulating the rose bouquets with short ropes of the plastic cedar...