Pootsville: A Short Story

I have lived in only one location my entire life: Edwardsville, Illinois. A peripheral suburb of St. Louis, it stands as the rare oasis of people in a desert of corn, pinned in its own personal bubble. Due to this blend of time and isolation, I developed a natural familiarity with my hometown. But, throughout my childhood, I longed to break free from the confines of the bubble and venture outward. However, this changed last summer, as I walked through Richards Brickyard, our family heirloom, that my great-grandfather, Benjamin Richards, founded over 120 years ago. I felt these childlike sentiments slip away. The bubble that had surrounded me for so long began to vanish, and the picture that it had been obscuring was slowly revealed.

Somewhere there is a town where everyone’s best friend is their next-door neighbor. Everyone here would always stop and talk about what is going on, no matter who you are. Such community does exist, but only in the small town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire. The value and importance of community is shown in Our Town by Thornton Wilder using repetition and pattern of events. A few important times this is shown is the play is when Emily and George’s disagreements with each other help grow their relationship. When Howie Newsome greets neighbors while he delivers the milk across town is a significant part of Grover’s Corners’ community. Emily’s death is also meaningful to the community’s connections to each other.

When he was not out playing with his friends he had chores to do which included, washing the car and mowing the grass. His parents were strict growing up he had to ask to do everything! He was closer to his mom more than he was his dad. Kids today are not as responsible as they were as children. My Uncle had lots of responsibilities to do each day as a child; rather than the kids today growing up.

Knowing Our Place is and excerpt from Barbara Kingsolver’s SMALL WONDER. The excerpt is basically all about the places where her life stories and where important times in her life take place. They all end up having to take place in the wilderness in a small town, in a small house in the middle of nowhere; where she had actually grown up. She talks about how her log cabin at the end of Walker Mountain is near tobacco plants and also how it has old historic nature to it. She talks about how she loves the rain and how it sounds in her little log cabin house that was built in the early 1900’s. She grew up and spent most her childhood in these woods filled with neighbor’s miles away and

In the book Seedfolks, a character named Kim travels to vacant lot in her town, Cleveland Ohio, to plant Lima Beans to honor her father, who passed away before Kim was even born. While Kim is in the process of planting her beans and watering them daily, people around the vacant lot being to notice her actions . Many people follow what Kim is doing and make there own little garden, which causes the community of Cleveland to be together and to communicate to one another. Throughout the book many character come and go to the garden, and each character shares something in common with someone else apart of this Community Garden. The novel Seedfolks shows that the garden has change everyone’s perspectives on things, and made them feel apart of something they might have never been apart of before. Some people that are involved are KIm, Ana, Sae Young, Maricela, and Curtis.

Children would work for paid or unpaid labor. Girls were mainly used for unpaid labor in the homes, to do chores. Girls were also used to do the grocery shopping for the family. When families did not have girls, the boys were used for these tasks. The Federal Department of Labor said that child labor was usually for the work for the pay of children under the age of 14. As time went by more jobs were offered to children. Boys found jobs delivering items to homes, from age 8 to 9. They would take fifteen deliveries a week making one dollar and fifty cents, but through the 1950s their income increased. They also found jobs selling newspapers on the streets. They would buy the papers from the companies as wholesale, rent out a corner in the city, and start selling the papers for retail value. They were known as creative businessmen. Girls found part time paid labor, doing babysitting at homes, or becoming store clerks. After world war two jobs for adults had decreased, because the business owners would start hiring the many children that finished school. Throughout the century, child labor had decreased because of the rising of the standards of living in Canada. Children in the present do not have to be forced to work to bring home money. They are influenced to go to school, develop an education and accomplish a strong profession.

The children of the household worked chores around the farm. Boys would plant and harvest the crops while the girls worked in the house much as tailoring clothes and cooking. Few families preferred education over farming. However, in large cities like New York and Philadelphia, male children would learn as apprentices. Women would worked in the clothing business.

Times were difficult in Habersham County. The skyrocketing prices of fuel and food were threatening to bankrupt the Johnson family’s small farm, which was no match for the multi-million-dollar mega-farms that had been popping up all over the southeast. Joseph, the family patriarch, was especially troubled by the farm’s

A town or village having a normal everyday life with people issues like jealousy , economic differences , and hostility. This makes more sense on how the whole Salem witch trial problem started . People who were in the village were referred to as poor farmers and they far from the Ipswich Road. The people in the town were the wealthy merchants , people who owned stores and things like that. They were thought to be influenced by the devil because they had all the wealth , and blessings but, the people from the village believed this theory . The village people felt threatened by the town people , so they labeled them as witches and believed they started this issue. On

About half way between Negaunee and Marquette the motor-road gradually turns into potholes and eventually dirt. A dirt road branching off of it runs along lazily for three-quarters of a mile so as to shrink away from all of society. This is Negaunee Township--a fantastic place where trees grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where log cabins and beautiful houses rise out of the ground and from the chimneys, wood smoke drifts slowly into the air. With flawless ease, kids are seen running around, invigorated by the fresh air. Occasionally a line of dirt bikes, four wheelers, and side-by-sides race along the muddy dirt trails, giving out the smell of gasoline as they fly by, and immediately they disappear into the greenery and all that is left of them is the sound of their motors fading away in the distance.

It’s often given the description of homely. People want to bestow upon you a feeling that on your first visit, you’ll fall in love (Trust me, you won’t). There are many roads leading into the small town of Middleville. Some twisting by the river, others curving around the valley. Some stretching for miles over the never-ending farmland. And that’s all the area is. Farmland, interrupted by a school and a village that is barely big enough to see on a map.

The small Wyoming town of Lander is where I grew up the first 9 years of my life. A quiet town with not much to do, a main street that consists of less than a half mile of stores. On the back roads of the town about 6 blocks from the main street and our usual destination is where we would set out from our home nesseled in the back streets of one of 3 elementary

In the not-so-quiet alien town of Yenderville, there are are two brothers, Hosea and Michael, who were closer than a leaf on a tree branch in the woods. One day Hosea decided that he was going to go to America. “It would be fun!” he said. When Michael heard that Hosea was leaving Michael ran away, but Hosea did not know. So he went to America, but the second he got off his supersonic, sound barrier breaking, horse, BOB; he got a call from Michael. He was in trouble so Hosea headed back to Yenderville.

Poverty is the leading reason that children are going to work at such a young age. A child’s labor contribution may be important for the household and for food, especially if few alternative opportunities exist to earning an income. Many children of mining or farming families are obliged to work to help

“ [T]he chore curriculum is informal and emerges in the interaction of children’s need to fit in and emulate those older, their developing cognitive and sensorimotor capacity, the division of labour within the family and the nature of the tasks (chores) themselves.”