4 Fall 2017 Applegater
BOOK REVIEWS
One Summer:
America, 1927
Bill Bryson
I had no idea that 1927 was such an
amazing year. Author Bill Bryson brings a
marvelously entertaining narrative to his
history book about the summer of 1927,
and I found it difficult to stop reading.
Bryson sets the stage by telling us that
there were few paved highways, that most
travel and shipping was done by railroads.
The US population was 120 million, with
50 percent living on farms (today, 15
percent of us live on farms). Prohibition
was in its eighth year, and Chicago gangster
Al Capone grossed over $100 million.
Americans were not popular folks in
Europe, and we were held in very low
esteem in France, in particular. This was
because America demanded that Europe
repay with interest the $10 billion it
had loaned them during World War I.
Europeans thought that this was outlandish
seeing how all the money borrowed had
been spent on American goods. Many
Americans viewed this nonpayment as
a betrayal of trust, which added fuel to
the great numbers of Americans with an
isolationist bent. America increased its
already extremely high tariffs, creating
a wall that was nearly impossible for
European industries to climb over.
Here are just a few examples of what
took place in the summer of 1927,
arguably one of the most sensational times
of the past century.
• The American workweek had dropped
from 60 hours to 48 hours, and the Fourth
of July fell on a Monday, giving American
workers a rare and almost unheard of three-
day weekend.
• In Bath Township, Michigan, Andrew
Kehoe killed his wife, then blew up an
elementary school, killing 37 children
and 7 adults. His farm was about to
be foreclosed on, and he blamed local
school taxes for this. (Kehoe had been the
treasurer of the local school board.) When
rescuers were at the school, Kehoe blew
up his truck, killing himself, the school
superintendent, and a young boy who had
survived the earlier bombing.
• A 32-year-old baseball player who
suffered from low blood pressure, chronic
indigestion, occasional shortness of breath,
and an appetite for sex and food (in that
order) that knew no bounds, and whose
best days were long behind him, broke his
own record, set in 1921, of 59 home runs.
The mighty Babe Ruth was back in style,
hitting 60 home runs, a record that wasn’t
broken until Roger Maris did it in 1961.
before. Previous attempts had claimed
the lives of 11 men in the nine months
prior to Lindbergh’s historic flight, which
made him the most famous person in the
world. He was so famous that his home
state of Minnesota considered renaming
itself “Lindberghia.” In the first four days
after his flight, 250,000 stories about it
appeared in American newspapers. (Side
note: Henry Ford wasn’t the only person
to receive a medal from Hitler in 1938—
Lindbergh also received the Grand Cross
of the German Eagle.)
• A young cartoonist by the name of Walt
Disney created an animated short feature
called Plane Crazy. The star was a mouse
named Oswald, who soon became known
as Mickey Mouse.
I have touched on just some of the
stories that Bryson has written about in
this five-out-of-five-stars book. Bryson
is the king of popular narrative, and he
takes us on a magical roller coaster ride
through 1927.
Get it. Read it. You’ll love it!
J.D. Rogers • 541-846-7736
Eve, A Journey
of Discovery
J.M. Bailey
• Fellow Yankee Lou Gehrig gave Ruth a
run toward that record. On July 4, Gehrig
led Ruth 28 to 26 in home runs. Gehrig
hit 14 homers in 21 games with three of
those in one game against Boston. (Gehrig
was named the American League’s most
valuable player even though he came up
short against Ruth with 47 home runs.)
• Carmaker Henry Ford, who was the
only American mentioned favorably in
Adolf Hitler’s 1925 memoir Mein Kampf,
was being sued for libel by Aaron Sapiro
over Ford’s rants about Jews published in
Ford’s book, The International Jew, a greatly
admired publication in Nazi Germany.
Ford was also dealing with plummeting
car sales. (In 1938, on his 75 th birthday,
Hitler awarded Ford the Grand Cross of
the German Eagle.)
• A murder trial in New York received
more news coverage than the sinking of
the Titanic. Ruth Snyder and her traveling
corset salesman lover, Judd Gray, were
on trial for the slaying of Albert Snyder,
Ruth Snyder’s husband and the art editor
of Motor Boating magazine. (In 1927,
women were not allowed to sit on the
jury of first-degree murder trials because
they supposedly couldn’t deal emotionally
with the fact that a guilty verdict sent the
convicted quickly to the electric chair.)
• The Mississippi River flooded in epic
style, remaining in flood stage for 153
straight days. The Great Mississippi Flood
covered 500 miles from southern Illinois
to New Orleans. In some places, the
Mississippi River was 150 miles wide.
• Charles Lindbergh flew his plane, the
Spirit of St. Louis, nonstop from Long
Island to Paris, a feat never accomplished
Poetry Corner
We exist, it is said by the scientists,
because stars explode
by Barb Summerhawk
Starburst seeds we are;
The universe stepped back, said
Nova, baby, blow.
Let’s not hesitate
We all can cross-pollinate
New worlds we’ll create
Fill with souls that resonate.
Hip hop over to my side of the Applegate Galaxy, where
All of us, sown by the stars
Sift down, crop up, stand out:
We are seeds of hope
Seeds of faith
Seeds of fun
Strewn across our landscapes here, now
Born in a supernova, us—so
Let’s sparkle like the stardust we are;
Shine on.
If you grew up in southern Oregon,
you have no doubt heard about the legend
of Sasquatch, aka Bigfoot. You might
even have a story or two of your own to
tell about that one time you were in the
woods, alone, semi-lost and you came
across “something.” It could have been
the feeling you were being watched, or
knowing for sure something was following
you, or perhaps you even caught a glimpse
of a shadowy figure that you just couldn’t
explain away. Having spent much of my
life tromping around in the woods, often
alone, I too have a few stories to tell, but
nothing I experienced ever came close to
what this book offers up.
If you love the idea of the elusive
Sasquatch, you will thoroughly enjoy Eve,
A Journey of Discovery by Applegate Valley
author J.M. Bailey, the first book in a
trilogy that includes Iron Mountain Ridge,
The Journey of Eve Continues; and Elusive,
A Forever Journey.
This story takes place in northern
California where the main character,
Anna, a Sasquatch enthusiast, decides to
explore one more wilderness road before
she heads home. As luck would have it,
she gets stuck on a narrow mountain pass
as night is falling. Anna decides to stay the
night in her car rather than risk hiking out,
which was a good idea given that the night
brought with it a huge storm, making it
impossible to leave.
With the sunrise, Anna finds herself
completely stranded, lost without a way
out, and face-to-face with her deepest
obsession: Eve, a living, breathing, and
enormous Sasquatch.
The story unfolds with Anna spending
the next few days living with Eve and
learning much about this wilderness
creature—and herself—throughout each
nail-biting twist and turn. This book will
Essay
surely keep you in suspense as the plot
thickens when Anna is introduced to
Eve’s family. Many unimaginable dangers
arise when a human being lives with these
denizens of the deep woods.
J.M. Bailey makes this adventure
seem believable, almost as if she herself
has experienced something similar. Her
detailed descriptions transport the reader
alongside Anna as she struggles to stay alive
and is torn between wanting to remain
with these creatures or to return to her
home and husband. The choice is taken
away from her in the end, but you will
have to read the book to find out what
finally happens!
I found the book to be a quick read,
an ideal escape for a few afternoons, and
perfect for anyone interested in delving
into the legend of Bigfoot. Enjoy!
Stephanie Allen-Hart
estacia66@gmail.com
Splitting words
Blade sinks into thick wet fir, thwack. I reach for
the maul and swing it down onto the axe head as if
I do this every day. But actually, I came out to chop
wood only because I got stuck writing. What better
way to deflect writer’s block than to get outside, get
moving, and—best of all—definitely have something
to show for it after a couple hours of effort.
Grabbing the hatchet, I lop off a bothersome
branch. In that gesture I realize this is about wielding
tools, not following rules.
Until now, I’ve been a timid axe-swinger, wannabe
splitter, woodlot imposter trying to figure out the
rules. Like an aspiring writer worried she’s not doing
it right, afraid of mistakes, anxious about the correct
way to wield an axe (semicolon), place a wedge (dash),
angle a hatchet (comma)—that person was not yet a
real wood-splitter.
Stuck, again. I yank the axe from damp, knotty
wood. Looking for a different way in, I flip the log.
This time it splits cleanly. I drop the axe, glance
at my tools, extend my metaphorical insight: As a
teacher, I encourage students to gauge good writing
by the impact of their rhetorical choices—effective
use of tools—rather than obsessive adherence to
grammatical rules. To experiment, throw their weight
into it, try stuff. Seeing wood-splitting that way
transforms my woodlot experience. I am at play with
logs and tools, not captive to fear of errors.
What was a chaotic woodpile, like a disorderly
heap of ideas, gradually transforms into a next-
winter-worthy composition. An introduction, then
conclusion, of crisscrossed logs bolsters each end.
Logs are arranged and rearranged, added and deleted.
I tinker with organization, syntax. Occasionally the
whole pile collapses, forcing me to start over. But
eventually a recognizable genre emerges: stacked
firewood.
I check agreement and parallelism, push in
protruding ends, sweep up chips, and head back to
my desk, ready to write again.
Margaret Perrow della Santina
541-899-9950
perrowm@sou.edu
Margaret Perrow della Santina is associate professor of
English and director of the Oregon Writing Project at
Southern Oregon University.
