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Text 1. Kansas City

Kansas City, Missouri, is often called the “Heart of America”, because it lies almost in the center of the United States. Its location at the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas rivers in the midst of the Great Plains – the vast agricultural heartland of the nation – has had an important influence in developing the character of the city.

Named for the Kansa Indians, who occupied the area prior to the arrival of white settlers, the town grew as an important river port and trading post during the early 1800s. However, many people were driven away during the 1860s by the violent clashes that took place during the Civil War. It was, in fact, the railroad that during the next two or three decades transformed Kansas City from a very small town into the important midwestern metropolis that it was to become. This change began when a railroad bridge was built over the Missouri River, helping to make the city a link in the nation’s transcontinental railroad system. The city then became, and has remained, a center for the marketing of grain (primarily wheat and some corn) and beef cattle for the country.

Today Kansas City is one of the nation’s busiest rail centers, and it is a cultural center as well. It has parks and monuments, theatrical and musical groups, and the Harry S. Truman Sports Complex, named after the nation’s 33rd President – who grew up in nearby Independence, Missouri. All of these aspects contribute to its reputation as summed up in the song “Everything's Up to Date in Kansas City.”


Text 2. Will Rogers: Cowboy Philosopher

“I never met a man I didn’t like.” That’s what Will Rogers wanted on his epitaph, und it is probably the best-known characteristic of this “typically American” part-Indian: cowboy philosopher, humorist, actor, entertainer, writer, and political analyst.

It has been said that reading what lie wrote and said gives one the best history of America during the period 1918–1935.

William Penn Adair Rogers was born on Tuesday, November 4, 1879, in a two-story house on his father’s ranch in Indian Territory (which later became Oklahoma). Will was always proud that he was by ancestry one-fourth Cherokee Indian, and a favorite saying of his was “My ancestors didn’t come over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat.”

As a boy Will loved to learn the rope tricks that the ranch hands taught him. Little did he know that the remarkable expertise he developed with the lariat would become the basis for an unparalleled career as an entertainer first as a silent stage and circus performer and later as a stage and movie actor, lecturer, and newspaper columnist.

His mother wanted him to be a preacher, and his father hoped he would someday take over the ranch. But Will was restless and always eager to see new things and talk to other people. As a young man he went to Argentina to see the gauchos. Afterwards, he got a job taking care of a herd of cattle on a ship bound for South Africa, and when he got there he drove cattle and worked on a ranch for a while. That was where he met the owner of a Wild West show, and so began his career as an entertainer.

From South Africa he went to Australia, where he joined a circus. When it ended its tour in New Zealand, he had just enough money to book a passage back to the United States. His act, that of a shy, silent Westerner doing rope tricks was an immediate success in both America and Europe. He soon found that when he started adding humorous comments about everyday happenings, people came to hear and laugh at his witty, philosophical sayings as much as to see his rope tricks.

Another of Will Rogers’s favorite sayings was “All I know is what I read in the papers.” In fact, the headlines and news items in the newspapers he read were the basis of his sharply witty criticisms of the foibles of this country's government (particularly the Congress, which he called his “Joke Factory”) and many of its prominent citizens. His honesty and good humor, however, neutralized the acid of his comments, 4 and most of the people he talked about were in fact great friends and admirers.

Rogers’s marriage in 1908 to a girl he had met eight years earlier in his home town was the beginning of a particularly happy lifelong relationship. “When I roped her, ” he would say of his wife, Betty, “that was the star performance of my life.”

Will Rogers’s career, like that of other entertainers, had its ups and downs before he achieved the stable success of his later years. Although he died a wealthy man, his main aim always seemed to be to share with others some of the enjoyment that his wit and wisdom brought him, as well as whatever good his presence and money could do where there was a need. His giving was spontaneous, simple, natural, and often anonymous.

Typical American as he was, he was also one of the great internationalists of all time. His behavior toward the high and the humble in the many countries he visited seemed to say: “I never visited a nation I didn’t like.”

Will Rogers’s death in a plane crash in Barrow, Alaska, on August 15, 1935, brought an untimely end to the career of one of America’s best-known and most beloved commentators. Five years earlier he had written: “When I die, my epitaph, or whatever you call those signs on gravestones, is going to read: ‘I joke about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I didn’t like.’ I am proud of that. I can hardly wait to die so it can be carved. And when you come around to my grave you’ll probably find me sitting there proudly reading it.”

Вариант 5






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