Glossary

a rest home ("died seven miles away in a rest home")—a resi­dence for older people who need housekeeping services (meals, sheets and towels, laundry) but not extensive medical treatment.

to knead ("He kneaded my shoulder.")—to massage firmly.

lather ("brushing thick lather onto his face")—a soapy foam used to soften a man's beard before he shaves.

girl-craziest ("one of the girl-craziest persons")—romantically excited by girls; when said to a four-year-old boy, this is a form of good-natured teasing.

a swell ("The ruts lead up and down the swells of the prairie")— (1) a gradual rise in ground level; (2) a long wave that moves without breaking; in the story, the prairie is described in terms of the ocean.

a homestead ("the old homestead)—in the nineteenth-century United States, land granted by a state government to any settler who would build a home, dig a well for water, and clear and farm the land.

an arrowhead ("Indians and arrow/heads")—a piece of stone, one or two inches in length, chipped to make a pointed tip for an arrow.

to pee ("he has to рее")—(informal) to urinate.

Papoose. Squaw, Hermoso ("he could name all the tribes, Sioux, Cheyenne, Papoose, Squaw, Hermoso")—American Indian words for "baby" (papoose) and "woman" (squaw) and the Spanish word for "beautiful" (hermoso); only "Sioux" and "Cheyenne" are real tribal names.

even ("keeps an even expression")—unchanging.

a teepee ("had set up a teepee")—a cone-shaped tent made of buffalo hide.

a bird dog (his bird dog Scooter")—a dog used to hunt game birds.

a kick ("the kick of the old shotgun")—the jerk backwards of a gun when it is fired.

fed up ("the Indians got more than fed up with all this")— annoyed, out of patience.

walking on water ("running on top of the wafer just like Jesus Christ")—the miracle of Jesus walking on the waters of the Sea of Galilee is described in Matthew 14:25.

to swivel ("swiveling around faster than a weather cock")—to turn or spin quickly on a single point.

a weather cock ("faster than a weather cock")—a thin plate of wood or metal that turns to indicate the direction of the wind, often in the shape of a male chicken (a "cock").

sod ("the sod house")—a grass-covered piece of earth held together by roots; in the U.S., used for home-building by early white settlers on the Great Plains, where there were very few trees.

lye ("how Grandma used to make lye soap")—a strong chemical substance (sodium hydroxide), obtained by passing water through wood ashes; American pioneer women combined lye with animal fat to make soap for washing clothes.

Questions

1. "I thank God this is not my home," the narrator says as he walks to the homestead where his grandfather had lived. Why does the narrator feel that way? Why does he think of the windmill as a "light­house"?

2. What picture of the grandfather do we get from the nar­rator's memories of the one week they spent together? Why do you suppose the grandfather had never visited with his grandson before?

3. The narrator's only other visit to the homestead had been forty years earlier, on the day of his grandfather's funeral.

1. Why do you think the narrator's father wanted to visit the homestead that day?

2. Why were the black cowboy boots "exactly the kind" that the five-year-old boy wanted? Where had he seen boots like that before? Why was the boy excited about seeing his grandfather's homestead?

c. Why did the boy start to lose interest? How did the father restore the boy's enthusiasm?

4. When the father and son reached the windmill, the father became lost in thought. Describing the scene, the narrator, in the boy's voice, says, "I... try to make myself thinner because I don't want to get in the way". Get in the way of what? What does the narrator imagine his father was thinking about?

5. What does the narrator mean by saying that finally the new boots hurt so much that "no wagon full of settlers [could] stop the tears"? Why had the boy's tears dried before they even got back to the car? Why did receiving a pocketknife make the boy "feel older"? Why do you think that the father also looked older at that moment?

6. What can the reader infer—understand from what is suggested, rather than stated directly—from the follow­ing statements?

a. This day, though, calls for silence.

b.... I can feel Father's strong hands, and as I hold the knife now I do not want to let go.

с. I am certain because I know what it is like to lose your father.

7. After wishing that someone would "fill this place [the homestead] with laughter", the adult narrator suddenly remembers a time that he had filled a place with laughter that he didn't understand. Why did the adults laugh when the boy asked his grandfather, "How long were you in jail?"

8. The grandfather's story about the windmill. What ele­ments of the story seem probable? Which elements are possible? Which elements are impossible, making it a "tall tale"?

9. The father says to the narrator, "There's nothing out here to look at to see if you're going in a straight line.... You get down in between two swells and you can't see where you're going or where you've been. The only thing that keeps you going is hope and that next swell...." [Emphasis added.] How could that description of the landscape be a metaphor (a way of explaining one thing in terms of something else) for the narrator's life and perhaps the lives of his father and grandfather?