In this book, the author honors the multicultural richness of rural America by revealing a rich and still-flourishing culture that is relatively unknown. Through a combination of more than one hundred poignant photographs and detailed captions, he gives visual evidence of the traditional connections and variety of contemporary Texas-Czech life and culture. He also shows the power of ethnic belonging as well as the forces of Texas-Czech cultural decline and rejuvenation.
A journey through the national pastime’s roots in America’s small towns and wide-open spaces: “An absorbing read.” —The Tampa Tribune In the film Field of Dreams, the lead character gives his struggling farming community a magical place where the smell of roasted peanuts gently wafts over the crowded grandstand on a warm summer evening, just as the star pitcher takes the mound. In The Farmers’ Game, David Vaught examines the history and character of baseball through a series of essay-vignettes—presenting the sport as essentially rural, reflecting the nature of farm and small-town life. Vaught does not deny or devalue the lively stickball games played in the streets of Brooklyn, but he sees the history of the game and the rural United States as related and mutually revealing. His subjects include nineteenth-century Cooperstown, the playing fields of Texas and Minnesota, the rural communities of California, the great farmer-pitcher Bob Feller, and the notorious Gaylord Perry. Although—contrary to legend—Abner Doubleday did not invent baseball in a cow pasture in upstate New York, many fans enjoy the game for its nostalgic qualities. Vaught’s deeply researched exploration of baseball’s rural roots helps explain its enduring popularity.
On any weekend in Texas, Czech polka music enlivens dance halls and drinking establishments as well as outdoor church picnics and festivals. The songs heard at these venues are the living music of an ethnic community created by immigrants who started arriving in Central Texas in the mid-nineteenth century from what is now the Czech Republic. Today, the members of this community speak English but their songs are still sung in Czech. Czech Songs in Texas includes sixty-one songs, mostly polkas and waltzes. The songs themselves are beloved heirlooms ranging from ceremonial music with origins in Moravian wedding traditions to exuberant polkas celebrating the pleasures of life. For each song, the book provides music notation and Czech lyrics with English translation. An essay explores the song’s European roots, its American evolution, and the meaning of its lyrics and lists notable performances and recordings. In addition to the songs and essays, Frances Barton provides a chapter on the role of music in the Texas Czech ethnic community, and John K. Novak surveys Czech folk and popular music in its European home. The book both documents a specific musical inheritance and serves as a handbook for learning about a culture through its songs. As folklorist and polka historian James P. Leary writes in his foreword, “Barton and Novak take us on a poetic, historical, and ethnographic excursion deep into a community’s expressive heartland. Their Czech Songs in Texas just might be the finest extant annotated anthology of any American immigrant/ethnic group's regional song tradition.”
As the early 20th century steadily recedes into the distant past, many details of daily life during that American pre-depression period fade to an increasingly abstract perspective, void of the feeling brought to life in this loving couple’s extensive and valuable correspondence. This is a rare first-hand account of the stress and hardships of a country nurse, and country doctor and WWI veteran, from humble origins. There is also a vivid portrayal of organized nursing at its infancy in rural communities, and the uncertain and difficult circumstances of establishing a country practice for practitioners of the Hippocratic Oath—as opposed to their big city brethren—and their transition from horse-and-buggy to Henry Ford’s first automobiles. The imagination of 21st century readers is revived with glimpses of rural life, family relations and varied problems in turn-of-the-century Texas, where disease and sudden death stalked young and old, as in all the ‘frontier’ states of the pre-WWI south western United States. Along with the moving emotions expressed through its characters, this correspondence is sure to awaken in readers, an understanding of just how much is taken for granted today and to what extent the values of the pre-depression generations have eroded.
Discusses the experiences of European immigrants in Texas, and examines their social and cultural contributions to the Lone Star State. Includes illustrations, biographical sketches, recipes, and excerpts from personal letters.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, thousands of Czechs left their homelands in Bohemia and Moravia and came to the United States. While many settled in major American cities, others headed to rural areas out west where they could claim their own land for farming. In From Praha to Prague, Philip D. Smith examines how the Czechs who founded and settled in Prague, Oklahoma, embraced the economic and cultural activities of their American hometown while maintaining their ethnic identity. According to Smith, the Czechs of Prague began as a clannish group of farmers who participated in the 1891 land run and settled in east-central Oklahoma. After the town’s incorporation in 1902, settlers from other ethnic backgrounds swiftly joined the fledgling community, and soon the original Czech immigrants found themselves in the minority. By 1930, the Prague Czechs had reached a unique cultural, social, and economic duality in their community. They strove to become reliable, patriotic citizens of their adopted country—joining churches, playing sports, and supporting the Allied effort in World War II—but they also maintained their identity as Czechs through local traditions such as participating in the Bohemian Hall society, burying their dead in the town’s Czech National Cemetery, and holding the annual Kolache Festival, a lively celebration that still draws visitors from around the world. As a result, Smith notes, succeeding generations of Prague Czechs have proudly considered themselves Czech Americans: firmly assimilated to mainstream American culture but holding to an equally strong sense of belonging to a singular ethnic group. As he analyzes the Czech experience in farm-town Oklahoma, Smith explores several intriguing questions: Was it easier or more difficult for Czechs living in a rural town to sustain their ethnic identity and culture than for Czechs living in large urban areas such as Chicago? How did the tactics used by Prague Czechs to preserve their group identity differ from those used in rural areas where immigrant populations were the majority? In addressing these and other questions, From Praha to Prague reveals the unique path that Prague Czechs took toward Americanization.
