The sticks

She grew up in the sticks and later moved to the city.

Most of the farming at present is done in the "sticks," that is, in the large, dead, and often blackened trunks of trees standing in most of the cultivated fields around. There are but few new towns in the Delta where the "sticks" are not to be seen, and much damage is sometimes done when these old "deadenings," as they are called, are set on fire.

Next day after school, I drove over to the town hall and found out where Hay was building their dinky little shoebox of a house. It was out in the sticks, out past the old gristmill. I drove out there around dusk. The place was framed; the chimney was up. Overhead was a pockmarked moon.

They gained just enough on that play to move the sticks and continue the drive.