IX. Class IX

Today, we’ll continue our discussions of our homes, and we’ll prepare to write a memoir essay.

First, I want you to hear the Judds sing a song that is a type of memoir essay about their home.

Flies On The Butter (You Can’t Go Home Again)
Wynona Judd

Old tin roof, leaves in the gutter
A hole in the screen door big as your fist
And flies on the butter
Mama baking sugar cookies, we were watching cartoons
I heard her holler from the kitchen
“Which one of you youngen’s wants to lick the spoon?”
Yellow jackets on the watermelon, honeysuckle in the air
Daddy turning on the sprinkler
Us kids running through it in our underwear
Old dog napping on the front porch, his ear just a twitching
Fell asleep on granddaddy’s lap
To the sound of his pocket watch ticking
Oh, oh, it doesn’t seem like it was all that long ago
Oh, oh, you can dream about it every now and then
But you can’t go home again
Me and my best friend Jenny set up a backyard camp
Stole one of mama’s mason jars
Poked holes in the lid and made a firefly lamp
Me and Billy Monroe, sneaking down by the river
I’m still haunted by the taste of the kiss
I was too scared to give him
Oh, oh, it doesn’t seem like it was all that long ago
Oh, oh, you can dream about it every now and then
But you can’t go home again
There’s a blacktop road, a faded yellow centerline
It can take you back to the place
But it can’t take you back in time
Oh, oh, it doesn’t seem like it was all that long ago
Oh, oh, you can dream about it every now and then
But you can’t go home again
Old tin roof, leaves in the gutter
A hole in the screen door big as your fist
And flies on the butter

Wynona’s song lyrics are a poetic type of memoir writing. 

Wynona’s song lyrics in “Flies on the Butter” aren’t full sentences. A lot of poetry is not written in full sentences. Wynona has just tossed out a series of sentence fragments–a series of phrases–and she has juxtaposed them together, but we, the reader or the listener can put those phrases together and understand what Wynona is talking about. We can understand the story that Wynona is telling us. Because she uses vivid images, we can follow Wynona’s thoughts.

“Old tin roof, leaves in the gutter
A hole in the screen door big as your fist
And flies on the butter”

With her words, Wynona has painted the picture of an old country house that has no air conditioner. To keep from burning up inside, the doors and windows are left open, but the screen on the door has a hole. Therefore, the flies have gotten into the house.

Wynona must be singing about a late summer or an early autumn memory. The leaves have begun to fall, and the fallen leaves have landed in the gutter. Here are some more words that paint pictures of things that most of us have seen in our own lives:

“Yellowjackets on the watermelon, honeysuckle in the air….

“Old dog napping on the front porch, his ear just a twitching….

“Stole one of mama’s mason jars
Poked holes in the lid and made a firefly lamp….

“Oh, oh, it doesn’t seem like it was all that long ago
Oh, oh, you can dream about it every now and then
But you can’t go home again
There’s a blacktop road, a faded yellow centerline
It can take you back to the place
But it can’t take you back in time.” Judd, “Flies on the Butter”

For this assignment, you will not write a poem, but I want you to capture vibrant memories of your home in an essay. I want you to use descriptive words to describe your home.

A memoir is an autobiography. It is something that a person writes about himself or herself, and it is based on his or her memories.

Some of you already have memories that you should write about.

We’ll begin our memoir study about our homes by writing at least 3 descriptive paragraphs about the setting of the place that you like to call home. Write the paragraphs quickly in a stream of consciousness. Do not edit the paragraphs yet. Just let your ideas flow.

Descriptive Writing is often used to establish settings in literature.

Consider Using Figures of Speech

The Need of Being Versed in Country Things
Robert Frost – 1874-1964

The house had gone to bring again
To the midnight sky a sunset glow.
Now the chimney was all of the house that stood,
Like a pistil after the petals go.

The barn opposed across the way,
That would have joined the house in flame
Had it been the will of the wind, was left
To bear forsaken the place’s name.

No more it opened with all one end
For teams that came by the stony road
To drum on the floor with scurrying hoofs
And brush the mow with the summer load.

The birds that came to it through the air
At broken windows flew out and in,
Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh
From too much dwelling on what has been.

Yet for them the lilac renewed its leaf,
And the aged elm, though touched with fire;
And the dry pump flung up an awkward arm;
And the fence post carried a strand of wire.

For them there was really nothing sad.
But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept,
One had to be versed in country things
Not to believe the phoebes wept.

[note: a phoebe is a bird]

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing from Meyer & Miller, The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature, pg. 769.

1. FIRST RESPONSE. What kinds of moods are produced in the speaker by the house and the birds?”The birds that came to it through the air
   At broken windows flew out and in,
   Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh
   From too much dwelling on what has been.”“But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept,One had to be versed in country things
   Not to believe the phoebes wept.”[note: a phoebe is a bird]”The house had gone to bring again
   To the midnight sky a sunset glow.
   Now the chimney was all of the house that stood,
   Like a pistil after the petals go.z{Im adding this question: why does the speaker mention sunset — the setting of the sun?]

“Now the chimney was all of the house that stood,
Like a pistil after the petals go.”

1. Do you think this poem is sentimental? Why or Why not?
2. What is the setting of this poem?

Figures of Speech

Personification

When the speaker says that the pump has raised its arm, he has used personification. When he says that the fence has carried wire, he is also using personification, suggesting that the fence has arms.

And the dry pump flung up an awkward arm;
And the fence post carried a strand of wire.

Simile – Comparing through the use of the word “like” or “as.”

“…murmur more like the sigh we sigh….”

“Like a pistil after the petals go.”

Looking at Setting in Tuck Everlasting – Descriptive Writing and Setting

Assignment: Read Rip Van Winkle in your textbook. Note how Washington Irving, who was a master storyteller, describes the setting of his long short story.

X. Class X

Let’s talk some more about our homes — and about describing them. When writing anything, I want to caution you to NOT write a bunch of rosy stuff that you wish had been. Be honest. As we continue this assignment, dig deep inside and pull out some words that are unique to you and your home. When we deviate from the truth in our writing, our words become shallow, and our writing becomes cliché.

cliché – a phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought. Oxford Dictionary

Here is a cliché about home: “Home is where the heart is.” 

Well, that may be true sometimes, but for some people “home” means something else entirely.  You have the option to write about any place that you feel is home to you.

“Home is where I hang my heart.” – Jacki Kellum

Carly Simon was the daughter of Richard Simon, who was the co-founder of the Publishing conglomerate Simon & Schuster. She was a wealthy girl who sang during the 1970s, and she married the folk singer James Taylor, but I don’t believe their marriage was happy.

I’m going to play a song that paints a real picture of Carly Simon’s memory of home. It is not a rosy, fake, and flashy place that anyone would want to be, but I suspect that it is an accurate description of why  Carly Simon got married and the Home that was buried somewhere in her heart:

That’s The Way I Always Heard It Should Be
Music by: Carly Simon
Lyrics by: Jacob Brackman

My father sits at night with no lights on
His cigarette glows in the dark
The living room is still
I walk by, no remark
I tiptoe past the master bedroom where
My mother reads her magazines
I hear her call sweet dreams
But I forgot how to dream

But you say it’s time we moved in together
And raised a family of our own, you and me
Well, that’s the way I’ve always heard it should be
You want to marry me, we’ll marry

My friends from college they’re all married now
They have their houses and their lawns
They have their silent noons
Tearful nights, angry dawns
Their children hate them for the things they’re not
They hate themselves for what they are
And yet they drink, they laugh
Close the wound, hide the scar

But you say it’s time we moved in together
And raised a family of our own, you and me
Well, that’s the way I’ve always heard it should be
You want to marry me, we’ll marry

You say we can keep our love alive
Babe, all I know is what I see
The couples cling and claw
And drown in love’s debris
You say we’ll soar like two birds through the clouds
But soon you’ll cage me on your shelf
I’ll never learn to be just me first
By myself

Well O.K., it’s time we moved in together
And raised a family of our own, you and me
Well, that’s the way I’ve always heard it should be,
You want to marry me, we’ll marry
We’ll marry
© 1970 Quackenbush Music Ltd. / Kensho Music, ASCAP

Although some lyrics read well on paper, the following song lyrics read best when Caroly sings them. She knows where to insert the poignant pauses. Carly Simon began her recording career decades ago, but a few months ago, she performed another one of her songs that shatters the cliché  of homelife, but it ends on a positive note:

Assignment:

Read About Setting, about Ernest Hemingway, Soldier’s Home by Ernest Hemingway, and what Every Writer Needs. Meyer & Miller pp. 107-115.

 

OUTLINE THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPHS FROM “SOLDIER’S STORY.”

Write in Full Sentences. If you use a quote, you must internally cite that quote immediately at the end of the quote. At the end of the outline, Add Work Cited: 

Work Cited

Hemingway, Ernest. “Soldier’s Home.” The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature, edited by Michael Meyer and D. Quentin Miller, 12th ed., Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2020, pp. 110-114.

At the top of the page, title your outline as follows:

An Outline of “Soldier’s Story” by Ernest Hemingway

1. “Krebs went to the war from a Methodist college in Kansas. There is a picture which shows him among his fraternity brothers, all of them wearing exactly the same height and style collar. He enlisted in the Marines in 1917 and did not return to the United States until the second division returned from the Rhine in the summer of 1919.”

I.

A.

B.

2. “By the time Krebs returned to his home town in Oklahoma the greeting of heroes was over. He came back much too late. The men from the town who had been drafted had all been welcomed elaborately on their return. There had been a great deal of hysteria. Now the reaction had set in. People seemed to think it was rather ridiculous for Krebs to be getting back so late, years after the war was over.”

II.

A.

B.

3. “At first Krebs…did not want to talk about the war at all. Later he felt the need to talk but no one wanted to hear about it. His town had heard too many atrocity stories to be thrilled by actualities. Krebs found that to be listened to at all he had to lie and after he had done this twice he, too, had a reaction against the war and against talking about it. A distaste for everything that had happened to him in the war set in because of the lies he had told. All of the times that had been able to make him feel cool and clear inside himself when he thought of them; the times so long back when he had done the one thing, the only thing for a man to do, easily and naturally, when he might have done something else, now lost their
cool, valuable quality and then were lost themselves.”

III.

A.

B.

4. “His lies were quite unimportant lies and consisted in attributing to himself things other men had seen, done or heard of, and stating as facts certain apocryphal incidents familiar to all soldiers. Even his lies were not sensational at the pool room. His acquaintances, who had heard detailed accounts of German women found chained to machine guns…were not thrilled by his stories.”

IV. 

A.

B.

5. “During this time, it was late summer, he was sleeping late in bed, getting up to walk down town to the library to get a book, eating lunch at home, reading on the front porch until he became bored and then walking down through the town to spend the hottest hours of the day in the cool dark of the pool room. He loved to play pool.”

V.

A.

B.

6. “In the evening he practiced on his clarinet, strolled down town, read and went to bed. He was still a hero to his two young sisters. His mother would have given him breakfast in bed if he had wanted it. She often came in when he was in bed and asked him to tell her about the war, but her attention always wandered. His father was non-committal.”

VI.

A.

B.

7. “Before Krebs went away to the war he had never been allowed to drive the family motor car. His father was in the real estate business and always wanted the car to be at his command when he required it to take clients out into the country to show them a piece of farm property. The car always stood outside the First National Bank building where his father had an office on the second floor. Now, after the war, it was still the same car.”

VII.

A.

B.

8. “Nothing was changed in the town except that the young girls had grown up. But they lived in such a complicated world of already defined alliances and shifting feuds that Krebs did not feel the energy or the courage to break into it. He liked to look at them, though. There were so many good-looking young girls. Most of them had their hair cut short. When he went away only little girls wore their hair like that or girls that were fast. They all wore sweaters and shirt waists with round Dutch collars. It was a pattern. He liked to look at them from the front porch as they walked on the other side of the street. He liked to watch them walking under
the shade of the trees. He liked the round Dutch collars above their sweaters. He liked their silk stockings and flat shoes. He liked their bobbed hair and the way they walked.”

VIII.

A.

B.

9. “He did not want any consequences. He did not want any consequences ever again. He wanted to live along without consequences. Besides he did not really need a girl. The army had taught him that. It was all right to pose as though you had to have a girl. Nearly everybody did that. But it wasn’t true. You did not need a girl. That was the funny thing. First a fellow boasted how girls mean nothing to him, that he never thought of them, that they could not touch him. Then a fellow boasted that he could not get along without girls, that he had to have them all the time, that he could not go to sleep without them.”

IX.

A.

B.

10.  “Now he would have liked a girl if she had come to him and not wanted to talk. But here at home it was all too complicated. He knew he could never get through it all again. It was not worth the trouble. That was the thing about French girls and German girls. There was not all this talking. You couldn’t talk much and you did not need to talk. It was simple and you were friends. He thought about France and then he began to think about Germany. On the whole he had liked Germany better. He did not want to leave Germany. He did not want to come home. Still, he had come home. He sat on the front porch.”

X.

A.

B.

11. “He sat there on the porch reading a book on the war. It was a history and he was reading about all the engagements he had been in. It was the most interesting reading he had ever done. He wished there were more maps. He looked forward with a good feeling to reading all the really good histories when they would come out with good detail maps. Now he was really learning about the war. He had been a good soldier. That made a difference.”

XI.

A.

B.

12. “Krebs looked at her. He liked her. She was his best sister. ‘Have you got the paper?’ he asked.

She handed him The Kansas City Star and he shucked off its brown wrapper and opened it to the sporting page. He folded The Star open and propped it against the water pitcher with his cereal dish to steady it, so he could read while he ate.

‘Harold,’ his mother stood in the kitchen doorway, ‘Harold, please don’t muss up the paper. Your father can’t read his Star if its been mussed.’”

XII.

A.

B.

13. “‘I’ve worried about you too much, Harold,’ his mother went on. ‘I know the temptations you must have been exposed to. I know how weak men are. I know what your own dear grandfather, my own father, told us about the Civil War and I have prayed for you. I pray for you all day long, Harold.’

Krebs looked at the bacon fat hardening on his plate.”

XIII.

A.

B.

14. “‘Your father is worried, too,” his mother went on. “He thinks you have lost your ambition, that you haven’t got a definite aim in life. Charley Simmons, who is just your age, has a good job and is going to be married. The boys are all settling down; they’re all determined to get somewhere; you can see that boys like Charley Simmons are on their way to being really a credit to the community.’

Krebs said nothing.”

XIV.

A.

B.

15. “So his mother prayed for him and then they stood up and Krebs kissed his mother and went out of the house. He had tried so to keep his life from being complicated. Still, none of it had touched him. He had felt sorry for his mother and she had made him lie. He would go to Kansas City and get a job and she would feel all right about it. There would be one more scene maybe before he got away. He would not go down to his father’s office. He would miss that one. He
wanted his life to go smoothly. It had just gotten going that way. Well, that was all over now, anyway. He would go over to the schoolyard and watch Helen play indoor baseball.”

XV.

A.

B.