Homer and Me - Tapa blanda

Homer and Me is an autobiography, an historical narrative, rich with detail, about a young girl, Ressie, growing up in the 1900's, in the southern United States, Arkansas, Florida, and Georgia. Ressie and her brother, Homer, are constant companions. They explore old graves, pig sty's, chain gangs, swamps, and 'town'. They help with chores - making molasses and soap, attend cattle dips and pig slaughtering. They meet an array of characters, including a survivor of the Civil War. Ressie, is a trouble to her mother, though, it is she that accompanies her mother on her 'doctoring' expeditions. Part of the family travels from Arkansas to Florida, bumping and chugging along in a Model T. "Where the roads were good, Charlie could make from twelve to fifteen miles an hour, but most places they were terrible. Homer and I often ran along beside or behind the car, and we had no trouble keeping up. There were mud holes and sand bars for the car to get stuck in, and after a rain the dirt roads were always gully-washed. Several times the car almost tipped over. Mama would glare at Charlie whenever that happened, but she did not utter one word of complaint. . With the tang of youthful critics, the children and their friends trample across swamps and backlands, across social and racial boundaries. In Florida, they encounter snakes, gators, bees and fugitives from the chain gang. Gradually, her older brother Homer comes of age, and she begins to realize her own right as a person. Writing and reading have become precious to her. So, the story, Homer and Me ends at the edge of childhood, where the next begins.

Ressie Chrenshaw Gray Watts, author of three books, numerous short stories, articles, and poems, started writing in elementary school, when she was presented with a notebook. Her love for reading and writing was encouraged by her teachers, and she published her first story in the local newspaper. At the age of seventeen, she moved to Minnesota, to care for her sister's children. She married, and lived with her husband on the Minnesota swamp bogs, until wolves scared and drove them to move to town. Later, widowed, with four children, she waitressed, worked at the post office, and cooked for a tuberculosis sanitarium. Remarried, she became involved with her husband's work at the local newspaper, the Kelliher Independent. She began to write for the paper. And became a member of Minnesota Press Women. She began with an advice column, and eventually, her Out of the Past articles focused on local folks, and their tales of coming to Minnesota, homesteading and surviving in the 1900's , and, on her own recollections of Arkansas and Florida, the Model T, hearing Charles Lindberg speak, and 'how things used to be'. Her experiences turned to words, in the true venue of a storyteller. Later, she moved with her family to California. She became a professional member of the National Writers Club, Women, published in California Highway Patrol, California Farmer, and Mc Calls. At the age of 92, Ressie approached the editor of the local newspaper and offered excerpts from her articles, and from Homer and Me. The column has drawn many letters of appreciation, and requests for copies of the book. Her other works include Cippy, the fictional story, of a young girl raised in the Florida everglades by her fugitive father, and Depression Cabbage, an historical narrative, stories of coming to Minnesota, and surviving the depression era.