Early on in the novel DEVIL MAKE A THIRD, Buck's Mama shared her greatest fear with her son, 18 year-old Buck, who is about to leave home for the first time. Buck's Mama nervously warned him, "Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves..." Now that old 20th century sayin' generally goes on to include "in three generations" but in Buck's Mama's case, she feared her family could just as soon lose what little they had acquired through a lifetime of brutally hard labor IN A SINGLE GENERATION . It is my opinion that Dougie Bailey invoked this dire warning on page 20 of his only novel and repeated it at intervals throughout the book because Dougie also took his character's warning seriously. Dougie was a caretaker from the third generation of the Baker fortune and he wrote his book to show the world he understood his personal responsibility to himself and his family but he also wrote the book to let some of his outlaw kinfolks know that he KNEW more about the genealogy of the 14 Baker heirs than they ever imagined and they were gonna have a fight on their hands if they thought about going into Houston County Probate Court and tryin' to sass Dougie and his lawyer. https://www.forbes.com/sites/dennisjaffe/2019/01/28/the-shirtsleeves-to-shirtsleeves-curse-how-family-wealth-can-survive-it/#43f982f46c8d