Text Leveling System

The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963

RDQ:	1119	Max Word/Sent	52	Total Words	1848		Diff Words	603
Lex	760	Ave Word/.Sent	14	Hi Freq occurs	1380	74.7%	Hi freq	273	45.3%
AR	3.8	Long Sentences	23.4	Low Freq occurs	78	4.2%	Low freq	60	10%

1.	And you Wonder Why We Get
Called the Weird Watsons
It was one of those super-duper-cold Saturdays. One 
of those days that when you breathed out your 
breath kind of hung frozen in the air like a hunk of 
smoke and you could walk along and look exactly like 
a train blowing out big fat white puffs of smoke.
It was so cold that if you were stupid enough to go 
outside your eyes would automatically blink a thousand 
times all by themselves probably so the juice inside of 
them wouldn't freeze up. It was so cold that if you spit 
the slob would be an ice cube before it hit the ground. 
It was about a zillion degrees below zero.
It was even cold inside our house. We put sweaters 
and hats and scarves and three pairs of socks on and still 
were cold. The thermostat was turned all the way up 
and the furnace was banging and sounding like it was 
about to blow up but it still felt like Jack Frost had 
moved in with us.
All of my family sat real close together on the couch 
under a blanket. Dad said this would generate a little]] 
heat but he didn't have to tell us this it seemed like the 
cold automatically made us want to get together and 
huddle up. My little sister Joetta sat in the middle and 
all you could see were her eyes because she had a scarf 
wrapped around her head. I was next to her and on the 
outside was my mother.
Momma was the only one who wasn't born in Flint 
so the cold was coldest to her. All you could see were 
her eyes too and they were shooting bad looks at Dad. 
She always blamed him for bringing her all the way 
from Alabama to Michigan a state she called a giant 
icebox. Dad was bundled up on the other side of Joey 
trying to look at anything but Momma. Next to Dad 
sitting with a little space between them was my older 
brother Byron.
Byron had just turned thirteen so he was officially a 
teenage juvenile delinquent and didn't think it was 
"cool" to touch anybody or let anyone touch him even 
if it meant he froze to death. Byron had tucked the 
blanket between him and Dad down into the cushion of 
the couch to make sure he couldn't be touched.
Dad turned on the TV to try to make us forget how 
cold we were but all that did was get him in trouble. 
There was a special news report on Channel 12 telling 
about how bad the weather was and Dad groaned 
when the guy said "If you think it's cold now wait 
until tonight the temperature is expected to drop into 
record-low territory possibly reaching the negative 
twenties! In fact we won't be seeing anything above 
zero for the next four to five days!" He was smiling]] 
when he said this but none of the Watson family 
thought it was funny. We all looked over at Dad. He just 
shook his head and pulled the blanket over his eyes.
Then the guy on TV said "Here's a little something 
we can use to brighten our spirits and give us some 
hope for the future: The temperature in Atlanta Georgia 
is forecast to reach . . ." Dad coughed real loud 
and jumped off the couch to turn the TV off but we all 
heard the weatherman say ". . . the mid-seventies!" 
The guy might as well have tied Dad to a tree and said 
"Ready aim fire!"
"Atlanta!" Momma said. "That's a hundred and fifty 
miles from home!"
"Wilona . . . " Dad said.
"I knew it" Momma said. "I knew I should have 
listened to Moses Henderson!"
"Who?" I asked.
Dad said "Oh Lord not that sorry story. You've got 
to let me tell about what happened with him."
Momma said "There's not a whole lot to tell just a 
story about a young girl who made a bad choice. But if 
you do tell it make sure you get all the facts right."
We all huddled as close as we could get because we 
knew Dad was going to try to make us forget about 
being cold by cutting up. Me and Joey started smiling 
right away- and Byron tried to look cool and bored.
"Kids" Dad said "I almost wasn't your father. You 
guys came real close to having a clown for a daddy 
named Hambone Henderson. . .
"Daniel Watson you stop right there. You're the one]] 
who started that 'Hambone' nonsense. Before you started that everyone called him his Christian name Moses. And he was a respectable boy too he wasn't a clown at all."
"But the name stuck didn't it? Hambone Henderson. Me and your granddaddy called him that because the boy had a head shaped just like a hambone had more knots and bumps on his head than a dinosaur. So as you guys sit here giving me these dirty looks because it's a little chilly outside ask yourselves if you'd rather be a little cool or go through life being known as the Hambonettes."
Me and Joey cracked up Byron kind of chuckled and Momma put her hand over her mouth. She did this whenever she was going to give a smile because she had a great big gap between her front teeth. If Momma thought something was funny first you'd see her trying to keep her lips together to hide the gap then if the smile got to be too strong you'd see the gap for a hot second before Momma's hand would come up to cover it then she'd crack up too.
Laughing only encouraged Dad to cut up more so when he saw the whole family thinking he was funny he really started putting on a show.
He stood in front of the TV. "Yup Hambone Henderson proposed to your mother around the same time I did. Fought dirty too told your momma a pack of lies about me and when she didn't believe them he told her a pack of lies about Flint."
Dad started talking Southern-style imitating this]] 
Hambone guy. "Wilona I heard tell about the weather up that far north in Flint Mitch-again heard it's colder than inside a icebox. Seen a movie about it think it was made in Flint. Movie called Nanook of the North. Yup do believe for sure it was made in Flint. Uh-huh Flint Mitch-again.
"Folks there live in these things called igloos. According to what I seen in this here movie most the folks in Flint is Chinese. Don't believe I seen nan one colored person in the whole dang city. You a 'Bama gal don't believe you'd be too happy living in no igloo. Ain't got nothing against -'em but don't believe you'd be too happy living 'mongst a whole slew of Chinese folks. Don't believe you'd like the food. Only thing them Chinese folks in that movie et was whales and seals. Don't believe you'd like no whale meat. Don't taste a lick like chicken. Don't taste like pork at all."
Momma pulled her hand away from her mouth. "Daniel Watson you are one lying man! Only thing you said that was true was that being in Flint is like living in a igloo. I knew I should have listened to Moses. Maybe these babies mighta been born with lumpy heads but at least they'da had warm lumpy heads!
"You know Birmingham is a good place and I don't mean just the weather either. The life is slower the people are friendlier-"
"Oh yeah" Dad interrupted "they're a laugh a minute down there. Let's see where was that 'Coloreds Only' bathroom downtown?"
"Daniel you know what I mean things aren't perfect]] 
but people are more honest about the way they feel"- she took her mean eyes off Dad and put them on Byron-"and folks there do know how to respect their parents."
Byron rolled his eyes like he didn't care. All he did was tuck the blanket farther into the couch's cushion.
Dad didn't like the direction the conversation was going so he called the landlord for the hundredth time. The phone was still busy.
"That snake in the grass has got his phone off the hook. Well it's going to be too cold to stay here tonight let me call Cydney. She just had that new furnace put in maybe we can spend the night there." Aunt Cydney was kind of mean but her house was always warm so we kept our fingers crossed that she was home.
Everyone even Byron cheered when Dad got Aunt Cydney and she told us to hurry over before we froze to death.
Dad went out to try and get the Brown Bomber started. That was what we called our car. It was a 1948 Plymouth that was dull brown and real big Byron said it was turd brown. Uncle Bud gave it to Dad when it was thirteen years old and we'd had it for two years. Me and Dad took real good care of it but some of the time it didn't like to start up in the winter.
After five minutes Dad came back in huffing and puffing and slapping his arms across his chest.
"Well it was touch and go for a while but the Great Brown One pulled through again!" Everyone cheered]] 
but me and Byron quit cheering and started frowning right away. By the way Dad smiled at us we knew what was coming next. Dad pulled two ice scrapers out of his pocket and said "O.K. boys let's get out there and knock those windows out."
We moaned and groaned and put some more coats on and went outside to scrape the car's windows. I could tell by the way he was pouting that Byron was going to try and get out of doing his share of the work.
"I'm not going to do your part Byron you'd better do it and I'm not playing either."
"Shut up punk."
I went over to the Brown Bomber's passenger side and started hacking away at the scab of ice that was all over the windows. I finished Momma's window and took a break. Scraping ice off of windows when it's that cold can kill you!
I didn't hear any sound coming from the other side. of the car so I yelled out "I'm serious Byron I'm not doing that side too and I'm only going to do half the windshield I don't care what you do to me." The windshield on the Bomber wasn't like the new 1963 cars it had a big bar running down the middle of it dividing it in half.
"Shut your stupid mouth I got something more important to do right now."
I peeked around the back of the car to see what By was up to. The only thing he'd scraped off was the outside mirror and he was bending down to look at]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: No support

Dialog: Multiple speakers

Dialog: Broken dialogue

Dialog: Unlabeled Speaker

Vocabulary: More decoding/definition issues

Language: Many descriptive words

Sentences: Many Long Complex

Text structure: Story/Poem

Inferences: Some implications

Complexity: Several ideas - closely related

Concepts: Concrete/Simple Social

Chapters

Features

Character traits

Simple Plot

Dialect/Accents

Topic

Temperature

*Weather

*History

African Americans

*Family & Friends

*Schools & Education

Relationships

Low Frequency Words

according	bama	bomber's	breathed	coloreds
conversation	couch's	cushion	degrees	delinquent
duper	encouraged	et	flint	friendlier
furnace	future	hacking	hambone	hambonettes
henderson	honest	hundredth	imitating	interrupted
juvenile	knots	landlord	michigan	mighta
momma's	mongst	nanook	negative	officially
passenger	plymouth	proposed	respect	respectable
scarf	scarves	seventies	slew	sounding
southern	sweaters	territory	thermostat	they'da
turd	twenties	watson	watsons	weatherman
weird	wilona	windshield	yourselves	zillion