“But what would Woodridge say if Jesus was to reach down out this blizzard and slap this shack down?”
“I guess that Woodridge would call the deputies and the police and the city hall and Coxley’s Army and all of the alligators and yellow dogs and have them track Jesus down through the ice and the snow and lock Him up for a year or two. And if Jesus tried to help you build this other house you talk about, I don’t know, but I think that they would lock Him up for fifty years, ninety-nine years.”
“Surely they wouldn’t. Why, this hull isn’t worth two drops of my baby’s spit. And a house made out of earth bricks like we intend to build, really the actual money it would take to put it up would be even less than the amount that it took to build this one-room outfit. Do you think anybody would get mad at the Lord if he was to help us put up our new place? Who? Why, the money isn’t really enough for anyone to get mad about. It’s not that.”
“It is that.” Blanche touched the tip of her finger to cover over the baby’s knee. “It is just that.”
“Just what?”
“Just what you said. Because the earth house is so strong that it will stand for two hundred years. Because it has walls eighteen inches thick. Because it is warm in the winter, cool in the summer. Because it is easy to build and does not require any great skill to build it. Because it does not eat nickels and drink dollars, and because it needs no paint, because you do not have to work your heart and soul away and carry every penny into town to lay on the top of Mister Woodridge’s desk. Because of this. Because of all of these things. Because your house could be six rooms instead of this eighteen feet of disease. Because you could pay out the earth house in a year or two and it would belong to you. Because it would not belong to them. After all these years they are still bleeding the people for rent, payments, this kind, that kind, on these rusted-out, rotted-down, firetrap wood skeletons. If Jesus was to help you to get free from their trap, they would lay Him away behind bars.”
“I just can’t, cannot, to save my soul, bring myself to believe that any earthly human could possibly do such a mean trick. I think that old Woodridge does what he does because the Lord tells him what is best for him. Maybe the Lord told him that it is right and good to keep all of this land in one big block and not to build any houses on it. It would be easier to work in one big block. He could make better use of his tractors, save fuel, save on seed bills, and, after all, the house of the families that work on the land can just as easy be built over there on that Cap Rock cliff where the wheat don’t grow. This is wonderful wheat land right here under this old shack, and I think Woodridge is absolutely right in saying that he wants to tear it away and till this land. This one little acre here will feed many a hungry mouth every year.” All during the talk, Ella moved the baby closer against her side, and with her arm she squeezed him lightly with each word. “In fact, I was just intending to ask you to take my two hundred dollars to Woodridge’s office in the next day or two and buy that acre over there on the Cap Rock.”
“You know that I will be glad to do it.” Blanche spoke softly and quiet. All of this conversation was not too beneficial to Ella’s nerves right at this point. “Woodridge is possibly doing what he thinks is best. And to buy the Cap Rock acre for two hundred dollars is not wrong—no, I did not say that it was. But this is just where your troubles will start. It will be a hard fight. A fight with the lumberyard, a fight with the loan company, because you will find out that no bank will even lend as much as one dollar with which to build your earth house.”
“I’m not afraid of the hard part.” The noises of the boy made her eyes smile. Ella’s face plowed itself into long furrows as she thought deeper. “But Blanche, we have mortally got to get our little grasshopper out of this old crate. And into our other house. And I know how to fight, if it comes to that.
“I sometimes wonder,” Ella continued. Blanche wanted to cut the talking as short as she could. Ella needed rest, not speeches. Blanche got up and busied herself with the buckets and pots of water on the stove. “I wonder if it will ever come to an out-and-out fight. I sometimes hope so. I wish that the families of people that live in debt all of their lives in their trash-can houses would all get together and fight to get out of the miserable stink and mess. I wish they could know as I know that they work and pay out their good money just for the privilege of living in a coffin.
“A coffin?” Ella moved in bed. “A good coffin would cost more than a dozen of these shacks. A graveyard spot would cost more. Oh, it is just so expensive to die these days. This is the reason why I want to keep on staying alive. And I want to show just a few people around here that there is a way to come out of this mess, to build a better house, and not pick up and run away down the highway. I’ll be one that’ll never take to that road that goes nowhere. I can stand out there in this yard on a clear day and see the spot where I was born, see the old spot where Tike was born, I can see the old spots where all of our folks were born. And I just feel like I would go out of my mind entirely if I had to wake up every morning somewhere, away off in a place where I would get up and look out and not see all of these old spots. I don’t know what shape it will take, work or fight, or burn or freeze or what, but I do know this one thing. I am put here to stay.”
To quiet her a bit, Blanche said, “Shh. What is that?”
Ella was still. “Tike singing. He always gets to singing when he hears iron or steel ringing.”
“Listen.”
Little Grasshopper when he was a baby
Well, he hopped up on his mommy’s knee
And he grabbed up a tractor in his right hand
Says, “Tractor be th’ death of me! Oh, God!
Tractor be th’ death of me!”
“Listen to him make that shovel ring right in with his singing. If you would call that singing,” Ella said. “But the only thing is, it sounds more like he was dying or something.”
Blanche smiled over her work at the stove and listened.
The landlord he told the little Grasshopper
I’m gonna drive my tractor plow out on this farm
An’ I’m a gonna drill that wheat on down, down, down.
I’m a gonna drill that wheat on down!
Tike’s song seeped in through the cracks of the boards and in under the wallpaper with a frozen brittle tone. His shovel struck against the icy dirt, and Blanche noticed that he sang in pretty accurate pitch with the ringing.
Well the Grasshopper says to that landlord
You can drive your tractor all around
You can plow, you can plant, you can take in your crop,
But you cain’t run my earth house down, down, down!
No! You cain’t run my earth house down!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Bringing House of Earth alive has been a strange and wonderful experience. Because Woody Guthrie has such a distinctive writing style, it sometimes seemed as though we were communing with the ghost of the typewriter-banging Okie himself. His spirit is very much alive in these pages. Those who decide to enter Woodyland, as we did, never come out the same. There is an old house in the desert near the Chisos Mountains where Guthrie once holed up with his father, brother, and Uncle Jeff. If you visit the ruins, you can almost channel this novel in full.
Sometime in 1947, Guthrie sat down at his typewriter and found the right groove in which to compose House of Earth. We’ve done our best to edit the novel as we believe Woody would have wanted it done. We made a few cosmetic changes and spelling corrections, and some minor restructuring of two paragraphs. We thought about annotating the novel, but decided it was better to let Woody’s prose sing bravely without academic pretense.
Our partner in publishing House of Earth is the nonprofit Woody Guthrie Foundation, based in Mount Kisco, New York. All our proceeds from this book will go to the foundation. Never in our experience have we encountered an estate that functions with such loving professionalism. Nora Guthrie, a daughter, is director of the foundation and has
spent a lifetime preserving and celebrating all things related to her father. She is a joy to work with. Her family must be smiling down on her from the great beyond.
Through Nora we got to know Tiffany Colannino (archivist) and Barry Ollman (Denver art collector). Both were tremendous to work with.
Two great Guthrie scholars proofread our introduction and Guthrie’s novel: Guy Logsdon of Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Professor Will Kaufman of the University of Central Lancashire, author of Woody Guthrie, American Radical. We thank Heather Johnson, director of the Northport (NY) Historical Society, who helped us better understand Guthrie’s relationship with the Roosevelt administration. Robert Santelli, impresario of the Grammy Museum, shared his hard-earned knowledge of Guthrie with us around every bend. We also benefited mightily from Guthrie’s two great biographers: Ed Cray and Joe Klein. Bob Dylan and Jeff Rosen offered us smart feedback after their initial read of the manuscript.
On the production front, special thanks to Virginia Northington of Austin, Texas, for diligently helping to prepare the manuscript for publication. At HarperCollins, we worked with Jonathan Burnham and Michael Signorelli. They were terrific. From the Infinitum Nihil world, special thanks to Christi Depp, Stephen Deuters, Joel Mandel, and Mike Rudell. The audiobook was recorded at both Tequila Mockingbird in Austin and Infinitum Nihil in Los Angeles (thanks, Shayna Brown).
When this novel was first discovered, we collaborated with Pamela Paul and Sam Tanenhaus of the New York Times Book Review. They edited our jointly written announcement about House of Earth, titled “This Land Was His Land,” to coincide almost exactly with the troubadour’s one hundredth birthday. We couldn’t have found a better outfit to collaborate with.
Douglas Brinkley and Johnny Depp
Albuquerque, New Mexico
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brower, Steven, and Nora Guthrie. Woody Guthrie Artworks. New York: Rizzoli, 2005.
Butler, Martin. Voices of the Down and Out: The Dust Bowl Migration and the Great Depression in the Songs of Woody Guthrie. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag, Winter 2007.
Cohen, Ronald. Woody Guthrie: Writing America’s Songs. New York: Routledge, 2012.
Cray, Ed. Ramblin’ Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004.
Edgmon, Mary Jo Guthrie, and Guy Logsdon. Woody’s Road: Woody Guthrie’s Letters Home, Drawings, Photos and Other Unburied Treasures. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2012.
Garman, Bryan K. A Race of Singers: Whitman’s Working Class Hero from Guthrie to Springsteen. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
Guthrie, Nora. My Name Is New York: Ramblin’ Around Woody Guthrie’s Town. Brooklyn: powerHouse Books, 2012.
Guthrie, Woody. American Folksong, ed. Moses Asch. New York: Disc Company of America, 1947.
———. Born to Win, ed. Robert Shelton. New York: Macmillan, 1965.
———. Bound for Glory. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1943.
———. Every 100 Years: The Woody Guthrie Songbook, ed. Judy Bell, Anna Canoni, and Nora Guthrie. New York: Hal Leonard, 2012.
———. Pastures of Plenty, ed. Dave Marsh and Harold Leventhal. New York: HarperPerennial, 1990.
———. Seeds of Man: An Experience Lived and Dreamed. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1976.
———. Woody Guthrie Folk Songs, ed. Pete Seeger. New York: Ludlow Music, 1963.
———. Woody Guthrie: Roll On Columbia: The Columbia River Songs, ed. Bill Murlin. Washington, DC: Department of Energy, 1988.
———. Woody Guthrie Song Book, ed. Harold Leventhal and Marjorie Guthrie. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1976.
———. Woody Sez, ed. Marjorie Guthrie, Harold Leventhal, Terry Sullivan, and Sheldon Patinkin. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1975.
Jackson, Mark Allan. Prophet Singer: The Voice and Vision of Woody Guthrie. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.
Kaufman, Will. Woody Guthrie, American Radical. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2011.
Klein, Joe. Woody Guthrie: A Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980.
Logsdon, Guy. “Woody Guthrie and His Oklahoma Hills.” Mid-America Folklore 19 (Spring 1991): pp. 57–73.
———. “Woody Guthrie: A Biblio-Discography.” In Hard Travelin’: The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie, ed. Robert Santelli and Emily Davidson. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England for Wesleyan University Press, 1999, pp.181–243.
———. “Poet of the People.” In Woody Guthrie, Woody Sez, ed. Marjorie Guthrie, Harold Leventhal, Terry Sullivan, and Sheldon Patinkin. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1975, pp. xi–xviii.
Lomax, Alan, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger. Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012.
Longhi, Jim. Woody, Cisco, and Me: With Woody Guthrie in the Merchant Marine. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997.
Partridge, Elizabeth. This Land Was Made for You and Me: The Life and Songs of Woody Guthrie. New York: Viking Books, 2002.
Partington, John S., ed. The Life, Music, and Thought of Woody Guthrie. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2011.
Santelli, Robert. This Land Is Your Land: Woody Guthrie and the Journey of an American Song. Philadelphia: Running Press, 2012.
Santelli, Robert, and Emily Davidson, eds. Hard Travelin’: The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England for Wesleyan University Press, 1999.
SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY
The Asch Recordings, 4 vols. Vol. 1, This Land Is Your Land; Vol. 2, Muleskinner Blues; Vol. 3, Hard Travelin’; Vol. 4, Buffalo Skinners. Smithsonian Folkways, 1999.
Ballads of Sacco and Vanzetti. Smithsonian Folkways, 1996.
The Columbia River Collection. Rounder Records, 1987.
Dust Bowl Ballads. Buddha Records, 2000.
Library of Congress Recordings. Rounder Records, 1988.
The Live Wire Woody Guthrie. Woody Guthrie Foundation, 2007.
Long Ways to Travel: The Unreleased Folkways Masters, 1944–1949. Smithsonian Folkways, 1994.
The Martins and the Coys. The Alan Lomax Collection. Rounder Records, 2000.
My Dusty Road. Rounder Records, 2007.
Nursery Days. Smithsonian Folkways, 1992.
Songs to Grow On for Mother and Child. Smithsonian Folkways, 1991.
Struggle. Smithsonian Folkways, 1990.
Woody at 100: The Woody Guthrie Centennial Collection. Smithsonian Folkways, 2012.
Woody Guthrie Sings Folk Songs. Smithsonian Folkways, 1989.
New Music from the Woody Guthrie Archives
Billy Bragg and Wilco. Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions. Nonesuch Records, 2012.
Jonatha Brooke. The Works. Bad Dog Records, 2008.
Bob Childers, Jimmy LaFave, Joel Rafael, Slaid Cleaves, Eliza Gilkyson, Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion, Ellis Paul, Kevin Welch, Michael Fracasso, Ribbon of Highway, Endless Skyway. Music Road Records. 2008.
Jay Farrar, Yim Yames, Anders Parker, and Will Johnson. New Multitudes, Rounder Records, 2012.
The Klezmatics. Wonder Wheel and Happy Joyous Hanukkah. Jewish Music Group, 2006.
Joel Rafael. The Songs of Woody Guthrie. Inside Recordings. 2009.
Rob Wasserman and various artists. Note of Hope. 429 Records, 2011
Wenzel. Ticky Tock. Contrar Musik, 2003.
BIOGRAPHICAL TIME LINE
1878
Woody’s father, Charley Guthrie, is born.
1888
Woody’s mother, Nora Belle Sherman, is born.
1902
Charley Guthrie meets Nora Belle Sherman.
1904
NOVEMBER 24: Charley and Nora’s first child, Clara Edna Guthrie, is born.
1906
DECEMBER 17: Charley and Nora’s second child, Roy Guthrie, is born.
1907
The Guthrie family moves to Okemah, Oklahoma.
1912
Woodrow Wilson is nominated by the Democratic Party for president.
> JULY 14: Charley and Nora’s third child, Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, is born.
1913
Woodrow Wilson is inaugurated as president of the United States.
The Guthrie family moves into the “Old London House” on South First Street, in Okemah.
1918
FEBRUARY: Charley and Nora’s fourth child, George Guthrie, is born.
1919
MAY: Woody’s older sister, Clara Edna Guthrie, dies in a fire.
1922
Oil is discovered in Cromwell, twelve miles southwest of Okemah.
MAY: Charley and Nora’s fifth child, Mary Josephine Guthrie, is born.
1923
Okemah’s population jumps to 15,000 because of the Cromwell oil.
1926
Charley sends two of his children, George and Mary Jo, to stay with his sister Maude in Pampa, Texas.
1927
Charley is severely burned in a fire. Nora Belle Guthrie is hospitalized. Charley moves to Pampa, Texas, to recuperate. Woody stays with Roy in Okemah, Oklahoma.
1927–1929
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