tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4860342013383651825.post2058671959279557477..comments2024-03-26T00:14:54.751-07:00Comments on Fragments from a Writing Desk: ORNERY PEOPLE--"What is a Depression Okie?"Hershel Parkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03919613095448470289noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4860342013383651825.post-87559679098252083972015-07-12T21:25:28.854-07:002015-07-12T21:25:28.854-07:00I did not know about this book, Wayne, but have or...I did not know about this book, Wayne, but have ordered it, at once. Yes, I would argue with a couple of details, but Ameringer is absolutely right that the Okies (those who had come to Indian Territory before the land rushes) were more American than any New England town (of any size) in 1940. I have never seen a statement that so closely matches the thesis I have been developing this last decade. I will have to quote it prominently in ORNERY PEOPLE. Thank you!Hershel Parkerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03919613095448470289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4860342013383651825.post-37781269304698499012015-07-12T20:09:14.639-07:002015-07-12T20:09:14.639-07:00Do you know Oscar Ameringer, the German-born socia...Do you know Oscar Ameringer, the German-born socialist editor? When he first came to Oklahoma in the year of statehood, 1907, he was shocked by the depth of poverty he encountered among farmers in the countryside and he asked himself who these people were. Not immigrants, he said:. “They were Scotch, Irish, Scotch-Irish and English with only a few exceptions. They were more American than any present-day New England town.They were Washington’s ragged, starving, shivering army at Valley Forge, pushed ever westward by beneficiaries of the Revolution.” Pushed out of Tidewater Virginia, out of the Piedmont and the valleys of the central Atlantic states, into the hills and mountains of the South Central states, “they had followed on the heels of the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks and Seminoles, like the stragglers of routed armies. Always hoping that somewhere in their America there would be a piece of dirt for them.” The statement may be not be good history but perhaps it may stand as poetry. (If You Don’t Weaken: The Autobiography of Oscar Ameringer. New York: Henry Holt, 1940.) <br />Wayne Poundshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04087421833237385716noreply@blogger.com