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    The Bee Creek Blues & Meridian: American Chapters
    The Bee Creek Blues & Meridian: American Chapters
    The Bee Creek Blues & Meridian: American Chapters
    Ebook68 pages34 minutes

    The Bee Creek Blues & Meridian: American Chapters

    By Greta Gorsuch

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The American Chapters series presents short stories in vivid and easy-to-read 500-word chapters, perfect for English language learners internationally, and adult literacy learners in countries where English is commonly used.

    * * *

    The Bee Creek Blues/Meridian

    We are in Meridian, Texas, a real place, in the heart of ranchlands, hills, and wild country. Meridian is a small town with a diverse people who have come through hard times, and who work hard to preserve the community they love.

    The Bee Creek Blues

    It is 1934, in the middle of the Great Depression in America. There is no work, and times are hard. Adrian Cooper, a young African American college student from Ohio, has had to leave school because there is no money. He joins CCC Company 1827 to help build roads, dams, and parks. And he belongs to a rare "integrated" CCC company where African Americans work side by side with white Americans. CCC Company 1827 is sent to Meridian, Texas where it is hot, and the sun shines hard all day. The government wants them to build a dam, by hand, to bring water, and hope, to the ranchers and townspeople of Meridian. Not all goes smoothly. Some whites in Meridian don't like the idea of African Americans working on the dam. Will CCC Company 1827 build the dam? Will Adrian ever go back to school? Will good times ever return? Follow Adrian as he works alongside his friends and rebuilds his future.

    Meridian

    It is present day Meridian, Texas, and the Meridian Tribune, the tiny local newspaper, needs a new reporter. Young Mr. Bill Wells, fresh from the University of Texas, takes the job. Moving from the big city to a small town (Meridian: Population 4,445) brings some surprises, but Bill Wells reports on who he meets, and places he visits, and brings to life this small and diverse town. He battles alongside the townspeople to keep the local school open and encourages young people in town to learn photography. Written as a series of newspaper advertisements and stories, we follow young Mr. Wells as he begins to call Meridian his home.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWayzgoose Press
    Release dateJan 7, 2019
    ISBN9781386447436
    The Bee Creek Blues & Meridian: American Chapters
    Author

    Greta Gorsuch

    Greta Gorsuch has taught ESL/EFL and applied linguistics for more than 30 years in Japan, Vietnam, and the U.S. She is an experienced materials writer who actively researches foreign language reading and pronunciation. Greta’s work has appeared in journals such as System, Reading in a Foreign Language, Language Teaching, Language Teaching Research, and TESL-EJ. She recently co-authored Second Language Course Evaluation and Second Language Testing for Student Evaluation and Classroom Research (both from Information Age Publishing). She lives in beautiful wide West Texas and goes camping whenever she can.

    Read more from Greta Gorsuch

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      Book preview

      The Bee Creek Blues & Meridian - Greta Gorsuch

      The Bee Creek Blues & Meridian

      The Bee Creek Blues & Meridian

      American Chapters

      Greta Gorsuch

      Wayzgoose Press

      Copyright © 2019 by Wayzgoose Press

      All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

      Book Design and Editing

      Maggie Sokolik, Wayzgoose Press

      Cover Design by DJ Rogers, Book Branders

      Contents

      From the Author

      The Bee Creek Blues

      1. It’s Too Hot!

      2. Snake!

      3. Shovels

      4. Ohio

      5. Peaches

      6. Tents

      7. Rocks

      8. Water

      9. Fruit Trees

      10. Bees!

      11. Bored

      12. A Letter from Home

      13. Thanksgiving Day

      14. Buckets

      15. The Lake

      Meridian

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      About the Author

      Books in This Series

      From the Author

      Welcome to our series, American Chapters. The American Chapters series presents short stories in vivid and easy-to-read 500-word chapters, perfect for English language learners internationally, and adult literacy learners in countries where English is commonly used.

      All American Chapters print and ebook stories are also offered as audiobooks for learners who want to hear and read the stories and hear the sounds of American English.

      American Chapters are lively, relevant, and realistic short stories about living in the United States of America. About Americans, immigrants, sojourners, and the diverse peoples living in this wide landscape, the stories touch on the tough questions, and the great things in life—things like work, ethnic differences, our connections to the past, our place in nature, being new, small town life, personal loss, and above all, new beginnings.

      The Bee Creek Blues

      bee

      Chapter 1

      It’s Too Hot!

      tree

      The day was hot. The sun was bright. There wasn’t any place to get cool. And it was only eight o’clock in the morning! Adrian Cooper looked at the shade under some short twisted trees with something like hope. He moved closer to the trees. At least he could look at them. He didn’t know what they were called. They were not very tall. They were a sort of dark green. They were almost like pine trees, but they had dark blue berries under the branches. Adrian Cooper touched one. They were hard and dusty. These trees didn’t look anything like the trees in Ohio. Ohio was where Adrian Cooper was from. Well, today, he was far from home.

      Cooper! yelled Sergeant Hayes. Get over here!

      Adrian sighed, and moved back into the strong, hot sunshine with the rest of the company. Tom Hart, Adrian’s best friend, grinned at him. Tom offered Adrian

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