Word: fatherness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Like Dylan, whose lyrics and ethos are scattered through the magazine, Mungo abandons the city of the mind, the building blocks, the ideologies, and goes down home. He tells stories of himself, his mother, and father, Aunt Assie and Uncle John, a kid who got the clap at B. U., Auntie Irene, and these are nicer. "Luckies cost a quarter of a pack at Meister's, where you had to explain it was for your auntie Irene." He tells us he's "smiling a whole bunch" these days...
...Arlo's father, needless to say, was Woody Guthrie. Guthrie, now dead, was one of the giant figures of the Bonnie and Clyde era of American history. As a depression folksinger-songwriter, he was both social critic and super-patriot. During the last fifteen years of his life, a congenital nerve disease paralyzed, silenced and slowly killed him. (The same disease could hit Arlo in his thirties...
...film, we see Woody Guthrie during his last year. He lies in bed-still, dumb. Arlo comes to talk to him from time to time, even though his father cannot react. All Arlo (and the audience) can do is wonder what goes through Woody's mind...
...next one shows Wild Bill Hickok being shot in the back of the head while he plays poker. A boy's father is explaining to him, "There's Wild Bill Hickok gittin' it in the back of the head...
...Then there are the two fathers of Negro culture in America. Dr. George Washington Carver who came up from slavery, learned to go to school, devoted himself to his own research in "God's little workshop," and eventually developed 300 useful products from the peanut, 118 from the sweet potato, and more than 60 from the pecan. And W. C. Handy, who taught himself how to play a $1.75 trumpet, joined a band of roving minstrels, and became famous writing songs like "St. Louis Blues." After his success, his father told him, "Sonny, I am very proud...