Diddy Waw Diddy: Passage of an American Son

Because his father followed a trail of gushing wells in search of work on the oil rigs, the author of this lively and interesting memoir spent the years from 1938 to 1945 traveling with his parents and brother and sister across Texas. Porterfield ( The Greatest Honky-Tonk in Texas ) bases this account of his childhood, lived on the road throughout the Depression and WW II, on the diaries he wrote when he was a boy. His portraits of his father Tice, who frequently abused alcohol, and his mother Janavee, who yearned for a real home in the fantasy hometown the Porterfields called Diddy Waw Diddy , are perceptive and loving. Despite a hand-to-mouth existence and his parents' marital problems, Porterfield enjoyed a childhood filled with adventures and memorable encounters with eccentric characters. The memoir passes through the 1950s, when his parents finally settled down in a trailer park in Sequin, Tex., and ends in the 1980s with their deaths. Photos not seen by PW. (Jan.)