"Hey Lord, it's a queer feeling to find yourself old and troubled and right where the string peters out, then look back and see the trail you've left. But it's a pretty good feeling in some ways- take this house and all. Buck just heard me say I wanted to be back to the farm before I died. And here I've got a thousand acres and a big white house with a dozen rooms and big stores and barns and tenant houses and folks to do my work. Poor Buck. He didn't know and I don't mean for him to ever know. What I wanted was what you've got. You got peace that can come from the things you know every day and the things you work with. The only peace I can get now is from the inside. I don't reckon that's Buck's fault. He couldn't know what I wanted. And even if he did, he couldn't give them to me. My Lord, nobody can give them to me now. The things I want wouldn't be any good to me now-I'd have to be twenty again." ~ Jeanie Bannon from page 289 of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD

There's an interesting Blumberg connection to the actual people who Bailey used to create the fictional town of Aven in DEVIL MAKE A THIRD. In 1913, a ten-year-old Harold Blumberg was on horseback driving a herd of cows down Washington Street. At the corner of Dusy, a group of boys started chunking rocks at Harold and a fight occurred in which Harold was cut so bad he almost died. The boys were arrested and one of them was third grader Clarence Stagg, brother of Eula Stagg who became Mrs. Buck Baker at age 19 in 1919 and is the basis for 48 yr. old Buck Bannon's 19 year old bride in DEVIL MAKE A THIRD. from the May 23, 1913 DOTHAN EAGLE