Easeful and huge, the hot July goes through the barefoot weather, the idleness weather. The cramp the clamp of school released enough, the children of packingtown turn from June wildnesses to deeper, more ancient play.
On the dump, territory is established, shifted, abandoned, fought over, combined. Peerers, combers and excavators go treasure hunting. (They compete with old men and women looking for covering, furnishings, sustenance—anything usable, transformable, barterable, salable.) Children —already stratified as dummies in school, condemned as unfit for the worlds of learning, art, imagination, invention—plan, measure, figure, design, invent, construct, costume themselves, stage dramas; endlessly—between tasks, errands, smaller children to be looked after, jobs, dailinesses —live in passionate absorbed activity, in rapt make-believe.
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Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information:
Book title: Yonnondio: From the Thirties.
Contributors: Tillie Olsen - Author.
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press.
Place of publication: Lincoln, NE.
Publication year: 2004.
Page number: 149.
This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means.
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