Out of the Dust
Name: ___________________________________________________ Date: ______________________
SUMMER 1935
Section 13: The Dream through Met
1. What does Billie Jo liken the piano to in The Dream?
2. Who is the major reason that Billie Jo decides to leave home?
3. What direction does Billie travel in when she leaves home?
4. How does Billie Jo feel after two days on the train?
5. What did the man on the train take when he left Billie Jo?
6. What did Billie Jo think she would do with the picture that the man on the train left behind?
7. Who did Billie Jo call when she got off the train in
8. What did Billie Jo decide wasn’t any better, just different?
9. What did Billie Jo call her father when he met her at the train station?
10. What does Billie Jo’s father promise to do in Met?
Section 13 Part I: Using Prior Knowledge and Contextual Clues
Below are the sentences in which the vocabulary words appear in the text. Read the sentence. Use any
clues you can find in the sentence combined with your prior knowledge, and write what you think the
words in bold mean.
1. Now I slip under cover of darkness/inside a boxcar/and let the train carry me west.
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2. I have seen the/camps of dust-bowl migrants/along the tracks.
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3. I feed him two of the stale biscuits I’ve been hoarding/and save the rest.
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4. The children in the picture were clean and serious,/looking out with a certain longing.
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5. I tell him he is like the sod,/and I am like the wheat….
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Part II: Determining the Meaning: Match the vocabulary words to their dictionary definitions.
___65. boxcar A. grass-covered surface soil held together by roots
___65. dust-bowl B. storing for future use
___67. hoarding C. yearning or desire
___68. longing D. fully enclosed railroad car used to carry freight
___69. sod E. region reduced to aridity by drought and dust storms