Booktalking Colorado - Full Booktalk Record

Booktalking Colorado Full Record:

	Title:	A Year Down Yonder
	Author:	Peck, Richard
	Date Published:	2002
	Genre:	Humor
	Grade Level:	7 - 9
	Booktalker:	Marilyn Bunker

Booktalk:
By Columbus Day, half the privies in town were uprooted and laid flat from marauding Halloweeners. I expected Grandma to be a target as old people often were. But, it was Grandma’s favorite holiday, and Grandma wasn’t like other old people, a lesson that the offenders, being mainly boys, couldn’t seem to remember from year to year. It was 1937, and the “Roosevelt” recession meant Dad lost his job, so our apartment was history. My brother Joey was taken by the Civilian Conservation Corps for tree planting out west, and the only place Mom and Dad could afford was only big enough for them. That left me, Mary Alice Dowdel to be sent down to live with Grandma Dowdel until the family was back on its feet. A Chicago girl in a hick-town. Nothing modern, not even a telephone, and privies!! I had somehow survived until Halloween, and now someone had tied a nasty, rusty old tin can to the tail of my cat Bootsie. Grandma decided it was time. She made up some glue, got some picture wire and the big hammer and a spike and headed out to the cobhouse where Bootsie stayed. She drove the spike into the ground near the cobhouse door, and stretched the wire tight from it across the walk to the trunk of a Lantern vine about 5 inches off the ground. Then, we sat on a couple of crates in the cobhouse to wait. Sure enough, they showed up that night, trying to be quiet while breathing hard and ringing their boot heels on the walk. The wire caught the first boy at the ankle and he fell forward on his nose. The rest of the boys tried to stop and Grandma lunged through the cobhouse doorway and turned the pan of glue over on the head of the boy on the ground. The others trampled over him and hit the back fence running, and he came up limping following them. The walk was littered with things that seem to have fallen off the Halloweeners, a knife and a narrow-nosed handsaw, Grandma collected a half-full sack of flour the boys had dropped in the confusion. “That’ll do for our pies,” she commented as she headed in to use the privy. Then we headed over to Old Man Nyquist’s place. He had told Grandma that she could have all the pecans that had fallen from the tree onto the ground, knowing full well that not enough had fallen for the pies. Not to be deterred, Grandma simply drifted over to the barn. Suddenly, there was an ear-splitting explosion as the tractor roared to life. The old man’s dog shot from the porch yelping as Grandma drove the tractor straight across the yard and ran it headlong into the tree!! Suddenly, there were plenty of pecans, and we loaded them as fast as possible into Dad’s old little red wagon and lit out. Apparently Old Man Nyquist never did wake up. Then it was over to the Pensingers’ pumpkin patch for two nice big pumpkins and a medium-sized one. When I asked if we were stealing, Grandma said “We’ll leave a pie on their porch. Then, we headed back to Grandma’s house and she started making the pies for the Halloween party. They were an immediate hit, and everyone lined up for a piece. That’s when we saw Augie Fluke, the Principle’s son. His head had been shaved, and his scalp rubbed raw, and his bandaged nose was a mess. Grandma dropped the knife she had been cutting with and drew the one we’d found by the privy, and cut Augie a piece of pie…”with his own knife.” “Boy,” barked Mr. Fluke to his son, “you done took on the wrong privy.” “Punkin or pecan?” Grandma asked Mr. Fluke. Halloween wasn’t trick-or-treat to Grandma, it was more vittles and vengeance…or justice.