Customer Reviews

Shaking the Nickel Bush

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I first read this book aloud with my family as an adolescent about 30 years ago. I read it with my own children, and now it is time to think about reading it with my grandchildren. This book tells of the great adventure of life, lived with the eternal knowledge that--though mistakes and poor judgment will be made by all of us--they can all be made right with determination, responsibility, and faith. This story of two boys facing overwhelming challenges together, and discovering that there are few problems that don't have at least one solution, and you're sure to find it if you just don't give up. Exciting, encouraging, challenging, funny, and inspiring--all can be said about this book.

All of the Ralph Moody books are great. Check out Little Britches and continue on the path. These books are full of Great Values like hard work and honesty. Kids love them as do adults. Great for family reading time.

The first few books in this series were so good - this one was dissappointing. I enjoyed the wholesome nature of the early books (and the last two), but this book was written entirely about the time when Ralph was lying to his family about his whereabouts and employment, hanging around with shady company and engaging in questionable activities. The author wrote about his own life, but some details about the lying and stealing could have been ommitted and made the book more consistent with the wholesome tone of the early books in the series. The book is interesting and more action-packed than most of the later books, but I would not recommend this one for family reading. The early emphasis on honesty and integrity are entirely lost in this book, with no apparant remorse over the loss. The series is often advertised as being perfect for families, but the later books are not materials I would endorse for young people. It's an entertaining book, but I don't feel I'm a better person for having read it. It does not come close to the standard set in the early books in the series.

At the close of World War I, Ralph Moody, not yet 20, learns he has diabetes. The specialists give him six months to live, but his family doctor sensibly suggests that he "go back to Colorado...or Arizona...and let the sunshine at your body." After long years in Massachusetts, Maine, and Maryland (where he worked a war job after being excused from the draft for being head of his family), Ralph doesn't need any better excuse to return to his beloved West, and he takes a train to Tucson. But the cow country is overrun with returning veterans in need of jobs, and a pale, skinny Easterner without an outfit--especially one too painfully honest to pretend that his condition is the result of being hospitalized for a war-connected mishap--stands about as much chance of getting a riding job as he does of flying to the Moon. Soon he hooks up with Lonnie, a young veteran who's also in search of work, and what follows is eight months of hopping freights, camping out, risking his neck as a stunt rider in the nascent movie industry, and promoting himself (and Lonnie) as the "cowboy artists of the Southwest" as he revives an old skill at wood-carving and transfers it to clay-and-plaster busts of prominent citizens of Arizona and New Mexico. Even riding herd on Lonnie and keeping his real income a guilty secret, by late spring he's made enough money not only to send some back to his family but to seriously plan to buy land in Colorado and start a small spread of his own. Then an unexpected and shockingly hilarious mishap finds him alone and destitute again, about to hop a freight from St. Joseph to Littleton and start all over.

Though not as good as some of the previous memoirs in this series, "Shaking the Nickel Bush" is a basically optimstic and upbeat story of two young men who may be dirt poor but don't seem to know it, and are determined to find a way to survive. Lonnie is one of Moody's trademark vivid characters--lazy, improvident, a little larcenous, and too interested in showing the girls a good time for the health of his wallet (and sometimes Ralph's)--but he's a better-than-middling mechanic who falls headlong in love with the secondhand Ford they name Shiftless and ultimately all but rebuilds her. And Shiftless herself is almost as human as the boys who ride her: some of the most delightful bits in the book come as Moody describes her crotchets and idiosyncracies. It's true that Moody seems to have left a bit of a gap in his story--we never find out why or when he left Grandfather Gould's farm and get only a few tantalizing details about his life over the years 1914-8--but his deep delight in being on his way to "his home town" (as he calls Littleton) shines through in his repeated changes of "career": he's not about to leave the West again unless he goes in a pine box! And while he may never get the riding job he seeks, he does survive, his health improves (not without a good bit of scrabbling to find foods he's allowed to eat: leafy green vegetables and fresh milk are thin on the ground in the post-War Southwest!), and in the end he's on his way to Colorado for the summer, with hopes of improving his situation once again. This is another great family book with an inspiring air and lessons to teach about honesty, determination, and the value of improvisation.

The fact that these are the true life adventures of Ralph Moody, preclude changing the story to make it more consistant with the other books, as suggested by another reviewer. You get the story as it happened, with no modifications. This is one thing I like about Ralph. Get the whole series.

I enjoyed the book, but if you're only reading one of Moody's don't make it this one. It fills some important gaps in his story, but isn't quite as interesting as some of his other works. If you only plan to read one of his books, I'd recommend either Little Britches or The Fields of Home - in my opinion, they are his best.

I liked that the events that happen in the story true. It is fun to be along for the motion picture stunts that he does and his looking for jobs to be able to send money home to his mother. Just the odd jobs like making busts out of clay but being a cowboy at the same time.

I had trouble putting the book down! It painted a great picture of what life was like in ranching country at the end of World War I, as well as giving quite a practical lesson about putting one's faith in someone you don't know too well.