How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Mr. Hook came by Christmas Day as he had the year before, and this time he brought candy for the girls and Polly Ann as well as a set of carpenter's tools for Tom. He said they had belonged to an uncle and they showed they had seen some use. But Birdy Morris said that tools that had been used and kept well were always worth more than brand new ones. (34.2)
Birdy reinforces the idea that good-quality items from the past are better than new ones from the present. He makes this point when he gives Tom the secondhand snowshoes, and he makes it again here: the past had value and substance that's hard to come by in the present. This must be one of Birdy's fave life lessons. And maybe one of the author's, too, since he wrote the book 75 years later, with old-fashioned barns and saws part of the distant past.
Quote #8
They sat down to the platter of cold ham she had sliced off the Christmas roast, with pickles and potato salad, and cider to drink, and went right on talking about fishing trips and horse trades and the old-time hermits who lived way back in the woods with no friends except the garter snakes and toads around their shacks. [….] And Polly Ann's cheeks and eyes were bright. She listened to the men, breaking in now and then with some recollection of something her father, Chick Hannaberry, had told her when she was a little girl. The men listened to her and laughed at some of the things she said. Tom never recalled seeing her look livelier or prettier. (34.4)
The year before this one, Birdy had left the Dolans on Christmas when Mr. Hook showed up. This year, he stays and trades stories with Mr. Hook about the past, which has a way of seeming to erase all the differences between them. It's kind of like if you were trapped in an elevator with a stranger and you found out you'd gone to the same preschool. Presto: awkward situation turns into gab-fest.
Quote #9
Mr. Hook asked how many sisters they had been, and she told him five, until Prinny died. Prinny'd been the prettiest, with hair silver-yellow, like ripe June grass, a baby princess for a fact. Then for a moment she seemed to withdraw from them, her face veiled in memory, and her eyes staring out over the open meadow to the line of trees that marked the swamp. (40.25)
At times, like on Christmas, Polly Ann is able to tell stories about her family with good humor, but for Polly Ann, the past also conjures many painful memories. In this scene, Polly Ann starts off telling Tom, Mr. Hook, and Birdy pleasant memories from her past while they're eating a picnic—but the bad ones seep in, too. You've got to have a bit of both to grow, they seem to be saying.