This story covers the time tunnel of the Great Depression in an area of Texas that had not changed for several decades and would continue to progress only slowly until the 1960s-the Panhandle. It is a child's view of the brutal realism of the time, the smells, the blood, the cold, the lack of sanitation, and the rigidity of the adults surrounding her. It is the story of the author's first year in a school where parents are entertained with a prejudicial skit about African Americans, where a teacher whips a boy with a razor strap until he bleeds, where the girls pick dandruff from the head...