Read Online The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jeannette Walls
Tags: United States, Literary, General, Biography & Autobiography, Biography, Case studies, Problem families, Dysfunctional families, West Virginia, Poor, Homeless Persons - New York (State) - New York - Family Relationships, Walls; Jeannette, Poor - West Virginia - Welch, Problem Families - West Virginia - Welch, Welch, Problem Families - United States, Homeless Persons, Children of Alcoholics - West Virginia - Welch, Children of Alcoholics - United States, Children of Alcoholics
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door.
"Ready!" Dad hollered when we were all in our positions.
"Okeydoke!" Mom shouted. But instead of easing forward, Mom, who had never quite gotten the hang of driving, hit the gas pedal hard, and the truck shot ahead. The piano jerked out of our hands, sending us lurching forward, and bounced into the house, splintering the door frame. Dad screamed at Mom to slow down, but she kept going and dragged the screeching, chord-banging piano across the depot floor and right through the rear door, splintering its frame, too, then out into the backyard, where it came to rest next to a thorny bush.
Dad came running through the house. "What the Sam Hill were you doing?" he yelled at Mom. "I told you to go slow!"
"I was only doing twenty-five!" Mom said. "You get mad at me when I go that slow on the highway." She looked behind her and saw the piano sitting in the backyard. "Oopsie-daisy," she said.
Mom wanted to turn around and drag it back into the house from the other direction, but Dad said that was impossible because the railroad tracks were too close to the front door to get the pickup in position. So the piano stayed where it was. On the days Mom felt inspired, she took her sheet music and one of our spool chairs outside and pounded away at her music back there. "Most pianists never get the chance to play in the great out-of-doors," she said. "And now the whole neighborhood can enjoy the music, too."
DAD GOT A JOB AS an electrician in a barite mine. He left early and came home early, and in the afternoons we all played games. Dad taught us cards. He tried to show us how to be steely-eyed poker players, but I wasn't very good. Dad said you could read my face like a traffic light. Even though I wasn't much of a bluffer, I'd sometimes win a hand because I was always getting excited by even mediocre cards, like a pair of fives, which made Brian and Lori think I'd been dealt aces. Dad also invented games for us to play, like the Ergo Game, in which he'd make two statements of fact and we had to answer a question based on those statements, or else say. "Insufficient information to draw a conclusion" and explain why.
When Dad wasn't there, we invented our own games. We didn't have many toys, but you didn't need toys in a place like Battle Mountain. We'd get a piece of cardboard and go tobogganing down the depot's narrow staircase. We'd jump off the roof of the depot, using an army-surplus blanket as our parachute and letting our legs buckle under us when we hit the ground, like Dad had taught us real parachutists do. We'd put a piece of scrap metalor a penny, if we were feeling extravaganton the railroad tracks right before the train came. After the train had roared by, the massive wheels churning, we'd run to get our newly flattened, hot and shiny piece of metal.
The thing we liked to do most was go exploring in the desert. We'd get up at dawn, my favorite time, when the shadows were long and purple and you still had the whole day ahead of you. Sometimes Dad went with us, and we'd march through the sagebrush military-style, with Dad calling out orders in a singsong chant hup, two, three, four and then we'd stop and do push-ups or Dad would hold out his arm so we could do pull-ups on it. Mostly, Brian and I went exploring by ourselves. That desert was filled with all sorts of amazing treasures.
We had moved to Battle Mountain because of the gold in the area, but the desert also had tons of other mineral deposits. There was silver and copper and uranium and barite, which Dad said oil-drilling rigs used. Mom and Dad could tell what kind of minerals and ore were in the ground from the color of the rock and soil, and they taught us what to look for. Iron was in the red rocks, copper in the green. There was so much turquoisenuggets and even big chunks of it lying on the desert floorthat Brian and I could fill our pockets with it until the weight practically pulled our pants down. You could also find arrowheads and fossils and old
"Ready!" Dad hollered when we were all in our positions.
"Okeydoke!" Mom shouted. But instead of easing forward, Mom, who had never quite gotten the hang of driving, hit the gas pedal hard, and the truck shot ahead. The piano jerked out of our hands, sending us lurching forward, and bounced into the house, splintering the door frame. Dad screamed at Mom to slow down, but she kept going and dragged the screeching, chord-banging piano across the depot floor and right through the rear door, splintering its frame, too, then out into the backyard, where it came to rest next to a thorny bush.
Dad came running through the house. "What the Sam Hill were you doing?" he yelled at Mom. "I told you to go slow!"
"I was only doing twenty-five!" Mom said. "You get mad at me when I go that slow on the highway." She looked behind her and saw the piano sitting in the backyard. "Oopsie-daisy," she said.
Mom wanted to turn around and drag it back into the house from the other direction, but Dad said that was impossible because the railroad tracks were too close to the front door to get the pickup in position. So the piano stayed where it was. On the days Mom felt inspired, she took her sheet music and one of our spool chairs outside and pounded away at her music back there. "Most pianists never get the chance to play in the great out-of-doors," she said. "And now the whole neighborhood can enjoy the music, too."
DAD GOT A JOB AS an electrician in a barite mine. He left early and came home early, and in the afternoons we all played games. Dad taught us cards. He tried to show us how to be steely-eyed poker players, but I wasn't very good. Dad said you could read my face like a traffic light. Even though I wasn't much of a bluffer, I'd sometimes win a hand because I was always getting excited by even mediocre cards, like a pair of fives, which made Brian and Lori think I'd been dealt aces. Dad also invented games for us to play, like the Ergo Game, in which he'd make two statements of fact and we had to answer a question based on those statements, or else say. "Insufficient information to draw a conclusion" and explain why.
When Dad wasn't there, we invented our own games. We didn't have many toys, but you didn't need toys in a place like Battle Mountain. We'd get a piece of cardboard and go tobogganing down the depot's narrow staircase. We'd jump off the roof of the depot, using an army-surplus blanket as our parachute and letting our legs buckle under us when we hit the ground, like Dad had taught us real parachutists do. We'd put a piece of scrap metalor a penny, if we were feeling extravaganton the railroad tracks right before the train came. After the train had roared by, the massive wheels churning, we'd run to get our newly flattened, hot and shiny piece of metal.
The thing we liked to do most was go exploring in the desert. We'd get up at dawn, my favorite time, when the shadows were long and purple and you still had the whole day ahead of you. Sometimes Dad went with us, and we'd march through the sagebrush military-style, with Dad calling out orders in a singsong chant hup, two, three, four and then we'd stop and do push-ups or Dad would hold out his arm so we could do pull-ups on it. Mostly, Brian and I went exploring by ourselves. That desert was filled with all sorts of amazing treasures.
We had moved to Battle Mountain because of the gold in the area, but the desert also had tons of other mineral deposits. There was silver and copper and uranium and barite, which Dad said oil-drilling rigs used. Mom and Dad could tell what kind of minerals and ore were in the ground from the color of the rock and soil, and they taught us what to look for. Iron was in the red rocks, copper in the green. There was so much turquoisenuggets and even big chunks of it lying on the desert floorthat Brian and I could fill our pockets with it until the weight practically pulled our pants down. You could also find arrowheads and fossils and old
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