Diddy Waw Diddy: Passage of an American Son

By Billy Porterfield

Book Overview

Billy Porterfield's memoir begins in 1938, when his restless father decided to leave the family farm in Little Egypt, Oklahoma, to become an oil field driller. During the next seventeen years, the Porterfields - the author, his parents, and his younger brother and sister - moved twenty-two times, chasing the flow of oil in Texas in their sleek Terraplane Hudson. Alternately rambunctious and refined, mythic and earthy, Porterfield's family and circle of eccentrics are brought to life with rich color and texture.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060169990
• ISBN13: 9780060169992
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Harpercollins
• Length: 423 Pages
• Weight: 1.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.8" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

A Special Place in Texas History

Billy Porterfield either had the good sense to take great notes growing up or has a fantastic memory. Regardless, the result is a fascinating account of growing up in the oil patch of West Texas. Billy and his family moved twenty two times with his dad chasing those wild cat wilds of the past. Most of their travels were in a big Hudson Terraplane and whenever anyone asked where they were headed the standard reply was "Diddy Waw Diddy". Which a substitute word for whatever one wanted it to be...similar to Seinfeld's now famous yada, yada, yada.This book is filled with belly laughs that will keep you turning the pages for more but the best for me was the story about the woman who left her husband until he built her a dream home. After a few months it's finished and she returns to the find beautiful three story home awaiting her. It wasn't until she walked into the front door did she realize that it was only 12 feet wide and the back was a drive-in movie screen.This book is out of print but if you can run across a copy you'll find a very amusing look at the authentic life of families involved with helping to lubricate this country's industry toward the end of the Great Depression.