Plains Farmer: The Diary of William G. DeLoach, 1914-1964 (Volume 4) (Clayton Wheat Williams Texas Life Series) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1585440442 ISBN 13: 9781585440443

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press, 2000

Synopsis

Gathering eggs, planting crops, feeding hogs: firsthand experience of these grows more distant with each new generation. From 1914 to 1964, however, a West Texas farmer named William G. DeLoach quietly recorded this life-style. He described weather, plantings, harvests, births, and deaths in his diary. In doing so, he not only chronicled the life changes that everyone experiences but also kept a record of the developments taking place across the country and around the world.

The diary's editor, Janet Neugebauer, supplies interweaves explanations to round out the picture that DeLoach offers in his personal descriptions. Her history is a book unto itself that gives the context of the farming experience on the Great Plains. She explains the frustration farmers felt from overproduction, the price-cost squeeze, the exodus of young people into the cities, and the increasingly strong role the government played in what was shifting from a family's way of life to a corporate industry. Graceful and accurately detailed sketches by Charles Shaw provide the visual backdrop for DeLoach's story.

This work provides an overview of fifty years of national and international history as well as an intimate account of the life of an ordinary man in a changing world. Few farmers had time or inclination to keep a record of their day-to-day lives, but William DeLoach's perseverance has left us with a rich history of one family's triumphs and failures during half a century. For anyone who ever lived on a farm or visited relatives' farms, as well as for those interested in this aspect of our national history, this book will prove a real treasure.

About this title

About the Author:

Janet Neugebauer is the assistant archivist for the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, where DeLoach's diary is located. She lived on a farm within eighty miles of DeLoach's for sixteen years. She is the author of several publications on farm and ranch life.

From School Library Journal:

YA-- Neugebauer has taken DeLoach's entries and supplied the historical context--national, international, and regional--thus providing a valuable historical documentary of changing rural life in the United States in the first half of the 20th century. The book is an excellent source of primary material, documenting the life of one family as it struggles to come to terms with the harsh demands of farming on the West Texas Plain; the fickle agriculture market; and the natural, national, and personal challenges. Shaw's pen-and-ink illustrations visualize many of the DeLoach memories. The extensive bibliography, introduction, epilogue, and map provide excellent research material, and the thorough index helps readers find historical or personal data. This is a rich example of personal writing that will be greatly appreciated by students in a variety of disciplines--history, sociology, biology--and by true-blue Texaphiles. --Dolores M. Stein hauer, Thomas Jefferson Sci-Tech, Fairfax County, VA
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1585440442
• ISBN 13: 9781585440443
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400
• Editor: Neugebauer Janet M.
• Illustrator: Shaw Charles