Woody Finds His Footsteps (excerpts)

Among other things each of the four excerpts below contains at least one example of how chance events in the interpersonal, institutional, or societal worlds around Woody gave him access to essential developmental opportunities just exactly when he needed them - chance opportunities which were critical in accelerating his development along the road to becoming "the voice of a people"

"...Unlike Hitch, Woody was definitely born an “easy child” - given half a chance he mightta kissed a couple coyotes or splashed a flash flood. As it was he settled for being born while “The frog went a courtin’” with “Gypsy Davy”; being born to “hearing” his “mother singing to his brother Roy and his sister Clara”, to running down the road when Papa’s “hooves” come a “clomping”, to ‘woooop’ and being scooped, right up to daddy’s lap, and “How did y’r saddle horse do today?” “He et all my oats, an he et my hay…” And that’s not a bad start. Still it doesn’t quite add up to the “unbridled optimist” who could turn thumbing his way through a thousand miles of freezing “wind and snow”, “rotgut whiskey”, and “foggy bottom“ Appalachian roads, into “I roamed and rambled and followed my footsteps, to the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts. . .“, into “this land was made for you and me”.

Still it was a good start. From day one Woody was definitely “getting along all right”. After all he didn’t need any scales or arpeggios or “civilized music”. What Woody needed was mama “chording on the piano” and singing her “maudlin, old-time country ballads over and over” in her “high-pitched nasal twang”, and “then all over again”, “til it sounded like a nice ripe and a juicey strawberry in her mouth”.

And he didn’t need to be an only child, the child who got all of Nora Belle’s attention, good and sad. What he needed was to be the youngest, six years the youngest, so he got mama’s best hours while Clara and Lee Roy were gone, off down the “muddy” little “wagon road” to their clapboard school. What he needed was day after day, and month after month, up on the “grassy hill” with the “cedar and pecan and blackjack trees”, with mama in the “warmth and security” of Gramma Tanner’s “brand new house”, with its “window seats and paneled walls” and endless “nooks and crannies”; with mama singing at her “Price and Deeple upright”, with play porches all around...continues in Arrival

By six it was time for Woody to start getting ready for a life he had no hope of living; no hope as long as his papa was a “popular figure” in Okemah, a “justice of the peace” advising lawyers on their “more interesting” criminal cases, a “land speculator” running a booming business out of his office on Main Street, a politician who was becoming a “formidable force” in the county; no hope with his mother riding through town on her “regal black horse” and its “hundred dollar saddle”; no hope with an older sister he “idolized”; an older sister who “always knew her lessons”, who was “never late, never tardy, and never absent”; an older sister who was “unquestionably” the “star of the show”. And no hope is exactly what Woody had going into 1918. And if his family didn’t act quick, it was gonna stay that way. He’d never get to “roamin and ramblin”, to “hittin some hard travelin”; he’d never reach “that highway. . . that road that has no end”.

Fortunately for Woody by 1917 mama was already taking action. She was already “becoming forgetful” and having “little dizzy spells”. Already “jest sittin with a book in ‘er lap”, “jest sittin’ an’ lookin’ out across the whole room, an whole house an’ ever’wheres”. She was already showing those early signs of Huntington’s - already giving little Woody all the room he needed to start moving out on his own, to start finding “new ways to spend his days”, to start “sneaking into the cellars of every house up and down the street”; “one cellar after another with one kid after another”, sneaking into cellars “full of jars”, jars of “pickled beets, long green cucumbers, and big round slices of onions and peaches as big as your hat”. Peaches that were just askin’ to go “over behind the barn”, to the “clawhammer and a two-gallon feedbucket”, a bucket to catch the “whole big goo of oozy juice, and loose peaches”; the “thousand slivers of glass”, the “little sharp chips” that’d “shine like diamonds” as Woody “fingered” them off in “the warm sun”.

And by 1919, just as Woody needed to start moving from the cellars to the tree tops - from peaches to punchups - his big sister joined in. “Beautiful”, “intelligent”, and “head strong”, Clara was now “fourteen and beginning to bloom”; beginning to bloom just as Nora was losing her balance, her memory, and herself; just as Nora, now with four kids, was feeling “ugly and disheveled”, and “increasingly withdrawing from the world” - a world Clara “hungered more and more to become a part of”. The “subtle tension” that had always been there had now turned to “rivalry”, a rivalry that was escalating by shouts and roars, til “one day in late May” when Clara, “half crazy with anger”, decided to “scare her mother” and suddenly put an end to one of their “continual fights” - by “dousing her dress with coal oil” and “touching a match to it”.... continues in Arrival

... With his sister dead, his mother raging, and his father going under; with his gramma tending more and more to her infant grandson and her dying daughter, the door finally swung wide open for Woody. And he “drifted” out - out into “running and laughing”, punching and scraping, “fishing, swimming and playing hooky”; out into anything “just to try to forget for a minute that a cyclone had hit his home, to forget how it was ripping and tearing away his family, and scattering it to the wind”. He drifted out the door and straight into the “hot black fever”, into the oil boom that had just “blowed her top” and was “whirling, swirling, and swelling” her way right through the streets of Okemah; into the oil boom that couldn’t have come at a better time; into the oil boom that was just waiting for Woody... continues in Arrival

With “oil derricks jumping up like new groves of tall timber - thick and black and flying with steam”; with Seminole going “from 700 to 30,000” in a few weeks, and Okemah “quintupling overnight”; with the “sleepy little villages” of Okfuskee County “exploding”, the little 8 year old suddenly had himself a whole new schoolhouse. And it wasn’t about flagpoles or desk rows or chalkboards; about spelling or marbles or baseball mits. It was about “boomchasing” and “hard travelin’”, and it was about music, the kindda music you could taste and feel and see... continues in Arrival

...Woody’s schooling was about three years of “seeing it, sighting it, sucking it down”; three years of “edging his head through flying fists of all sorts and sizes”, of “oozing down on a load of pipe” with his “feet up past the stars” - his ears still “babbling, yelping, swushing along the streets”; his head spinning, “full of more pictures” than a 12 reeler - three years with the “whole air just sort of a roar and a buzz and a feeling that runs up and down your back, tingling” and poppin and lit up like a nite full of “old batty electric” lamps.

Woody’s schooling was three years of “trick bow fiddlers” and “railroad blues”, of “cripples rattling old tin cups”; three years of “war vets blowing mouth organs through shrapnel holes in their throats”. Three years of “hearing it, seeing it, sighting, walking, talkin it”, pounding it; three years of bobbing up and down in the whole “flood of gypsy wagons, stray musicians, street singers, and cement men”; in the “wild tribes of bootleggers, horse traders, rollers, rousters, and pimps”. Three years of “jumping right in the big middle”, of “elbowing down the stream” with Matt and Nick and little Jimmy Whitt: ‘Ridin with ya’, ‘Got yer grab’, ‘Take it back, Tong bucker!’, ‘Take it back!’, ‘Gimme slack!!’”.

It was three years of “leaning back against the bank window”, leaning back and “listening”. Three years of stretching out a few choice bits for later, for the kids still bricked up in school - under the thumb, under the rule; the kids starched up and pressed and “dressed clean as the morning sky”, still strung up “tighter than a fiddle string” - a few choice bits for the kids who’d wanna know bout all the places they’d never seen, couldn’t go - the Yellow Dog and poker halls, the girly houses, the “flabbery ass whores”; the “men whipped up to a fever pitch, jumpy, jittery, wild and reckless”; the pictures hanging off the walls, with “breasts like a feather pillow”, with their “little red cherry nipples”... continues in Arrival

Three straight years and still by summer of 1924 Woody was almost completely dead-ended. “Stone-cold broke” and “smelling failure”, Charley had “packed the family into an old Model T” and “moved to Oklahoma City in July of 1923”. And it almost worked. Within a year he was all lined up to “run the business end” of Uncle Leonard’s brand new motorcycle dealership. The rising star of the Southwest stunt circuit had just handed Charley a nice, fat, “two hundred dollars a month” contract - a contract that couldda sidelined Woody for good - when little Leo took out a Ford sedan on a quiet Sunday in downtown Chickasha. Took out the Ford, his four stroke cycle, and himself. So with Leonard dead and Charley’s job buried, the Guthries “limped back to Okemah”. And once again Woody’s family had come through for him just in a nick - by his 12th birthday he was right back where he started, only better... " continues in Arrival

Information and quotes re Woody Guthrie in above excerpts come primarily from Klein (1980), Yurchenco (1970), and Guthrie (1970, 1976, & 1963)..

re theoretical discussion of the critical role of chance events in accelerating Woody's development in each of the above excerpts, see Chaotic Matching/ Spwins.

Notes in Arrival relevant to first excerpt above ("Unlike Hitch.. to ..play porches all around") discuss:

* Woody's genetic bias re being an "easy child", "open to experience", etc with reference to Thomas & Chess (1977), Pervin, 1996, etc
* the benefits of Woody's sibling position re having models of competence, sibling caretaking, more time, attention from parents, etc, with ref to Toman, 1993; Weisner & Gallimore,1977, etc..
* the benefits of powerful opposite-sex role model re independence and creativity, etc with ref to Golombok & Fivush, 1994, Sutton-Smith & Rosenberg, 1970, etc
* early development of linguistic skills with ref to Ericsson & Fauve, 1988; Winner,1996, Gardner, 1985.

* Woody's first six years being virtually "Erikson's Dream' re development of 'basic trust', 'autonomy', and 'initiative', with ref to Allen 1994, Smith, 1980, Epstein, 1980; Main et al, 1985 etc
* family status as a powerful source of pride/confidence in early childhood, with ref to Hollingshead, 1967; Bourdieu, 1986, etc.

Notes in Arrival relevant to the second excerpt above ("By six it was time... to ... just waiting for Woody") discuss:

* the role of parental loss, experiencing horrific acts by/against attachment figures, affectively ill mothers, financial and marital strain, etc on 'drifting out the door' to disruptive behavior problems, decline in school performance, affiliation with peer gangs, etc with reference to Masten et al 1991, Rutter, 1985, Radke-Yarrow, et al 1992, etc

Notes in Arrival relevant to the third excerpt above ("With oil derricks jumping.. to ... red cherry nipples") discuss:

* the role of father's social connections, prior positive parent child relationship, ongoing ties to extended family, etc, limiting extent of deliquency and giving Woody access to meaningful learning activities outside school with reference to McLoyd, 1989, Wilson, 1989, etc.
* the role of the oil boom in giving Woody access to the real “tool world” just at the peak of Erikson’s “school age” - just as he was most “ready to learn, to be directed by others”; just as his “intellectual curiosity”, his desire “to know” and take on “parental roles” were all skyrocketing - with the result that he escaped both school and delinquency, and instead got 3 years of intensive “learning experiences” with “the help of cooperative peers and instructive adults”, and of course developed a powerful sense of “competency”, not to mention a thorough grounding in the basics of his adult life, ie ear music, wordslinging, and street hustling. All with reference to Allen, 1994; Erikson, 1968; Lowe, 1993, etc.
* Woody''s mature “symbolic codes”/ ”languages” developing precisely the same characteristics as his oil boom "school age", ie virtually synesthetic, with its continual mix and flow of a “swirling, whirling, swelling” roar of sound, form, words, and action, with ref to Gardner, 1985, 1982, 1973; Gardner, Wolf & Smith, 1982; Gardner & Winner, 1982, Cytowic, 1994, etc.

All of the above references are available in Arrival. see Sources