HUSTLIN' DOTHAN ~ (boy, I hope I don't hurt nobody's feelin's with this post but if I do, it be that way some times) Stories like this RENEW MY LOVE FOR MY OLD HOMETOWN and this one is right up there with the con job we did on THE STATE OF ALABAMA when we got our own courthouse and county in 1903. I was sittin' around yesterday and an old friend came by and what a story he told me! Did ya know that a Dothan man was behind GETTIN' THE STATE FLOWER CHANGED from the golden rod to the camellia? Come to find out that a buddy of mine's Grandpa, who married an OAKLEY/MCGRIFF girl from Columbia and another Dothan man both owned camellia nurseries in South Alabama and in 1959 they decided to change the Alabama state flower. (the other guy lived in Dothan on Montezuma and had dropped fishin' and taken up camellias as his hobby. At that time, the B'ham camellia show was attracting 40,000 people each year). Alabama already had a great state flower with the goldenrod but the DOTHAN HUSTLERS NEEDED TO SELL SOME CAMELLIA PLANTS so they came up with a new story, just like the Dothan guys did in 1903 when we needed to create OUR OWN COUNTY. When their idea was criticized BY NEWSPAPER EDITORS STATEWIDE because the goldenrod was a NATIVE PLANT and not a JAPANESE INVADER like the camellia, they countered with the NASTY RUMOR that the goldenrod was also an alien species because THE DAMN YANKEES BROUGHT GOLDEN ROD SEEDS TO ALABAMA with their hay! In 1960 Alabama, that was enough to put THE GOLDENROD OUTTA BUSINESS! (clipping fro the February 7, 1960 DOTHAN EAGLE)

The Foreward of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD compares men to corn plants

As the town is the nation in seed, so is a strong man the kernel of the town.

The life of the strong man is the beam from which the vigor of the town is projected, and, since the progress of man is by nature episodic, so a town may leap one year and stumble another. Robust in peak times, bloodless in the valleys, the commonwealth ebbs and flows with the temper of its men.

The lusty, always greedy, sometimes fumbling fingers of the strong man enrich the country in spite of his motives, as the earthworm's blind and selfish groping mellows the soil.

Those other men, those who grovel and hesitate, live only within the boundary of their fears, in a dusty husk of a world, until the strong man comes, saying,

"I will build for myself, and if the public harvest follows my private vice, then join me at the board and leave it gratified."

 

 

"Chapter 1: Buck left the farm when he was eighteen."

The novel DEVIL MAKE A THIRD opens with young Buck Bannon behind the plow "blinded by the sun", with sweat stinging his eyes and burning as it soaked  into the raw places on his neck chafed by the mule's reins but none of that mattered because "he was eighteen  and he was following a mule for the last time." The reader has no idea whether Buck had spontaneously made this momentous decision or whether it was made after careful planning. One thing is for certain, the main thing on Buck's mind is how he's going to tell his Mama he's leaving the old home place forever and moving to the nearby town of Aven.

 "I have seen all the football games that Lowell High has played since the first day I went out for the team as a scared sophomore. Besides the games that I actually played in, I have played in all the rest of them, right up through last season-undefeated, state champs, as you say. Yes, I have played in all the rest of them. My ghost has been in that Lowell High backfield for lo these many years." ~ Jack Kerouac in 1968 (clipping from the October 10, 1938 LOWELL SUN) 

 proposal for a historical marker to be erected on Queen City Avenue in 2021:

THE TOWN PLAT OF TUSCALOOSA, 1821

On Friday, October 4, 1816, The Choctaw Indians extinguished their title to this property when they signed a treaty which ceded all of their land east of the Tombigbee River to the United States. On March 3, 1817, the U.S. Congress reserved from public land sale this Section 22 of Township 21 South, Range 10 West (Huntsville Meridian). Queen City Avenue runs north to south along the eastern margin line of this land section. On January 9, 1821, the commissioner of the General Land Office, ordered General John Coffee, Surveyor General for the State of Alabama, to survey this section of land. This survey laid out all of the original city of Tuscaloosa's streets at right angles to the present-day intersection of Greensboro Avenue and University Boulevard. In the fall of 1821, Colonel John McKee, registrar of the land office in Tuscaloosa, began to auction off town lots. With only a few alterations, the present layout of the city blocks and streets in the original city of Tuscaloosa preserves and brings down to us to this day the Town Plat Survey of Tuscaloosa, 1821.

For a new project I decided to scan old Corollas for Chukker pictures so the first one I picked up was 2002 and opened it up and started flippin' pages and then this two page reminder of the night GEORGE CLINTON PLAYED THE QUAD. (very appropriate image and music for 2020, seeing as how some of "the kids" in this picture are now the parents of children like the bunch we've had to deal with in town for the past ten weeks. My son should have this P-FUNK album in his collection. It's got ONE NATION UNDER A GROOVE on it)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0I-5tr2m74

 

 

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       http://ragpiano.com/comps/lwhite.shtml

Lasses White

In my analysis of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD, I have described three Baker brothers as models for characters in the novel. Yesterday, I learned more about another Baker brother, Robert Chester Baker (1880-1914). Robert went by the nickname "Coon" and was eleven years younger than Buck. Coon may have been one of the models for the Bannon brother who participates in the Ku Klux Klan flogging of a prostitute in Chapter 14. In 1908, Coon was arrested and acquitted by Dothan authorities for the murder of Jack Oates, a Black drayman. Oates was apparently murdered during a flogging. Three other men were also arrested for his murder. Also in 1908, a house owned by Coon near Howell School burned and in 1915 this lot became the baseball diamond for Dothan's first professional league baseball team. From 1915 until the construction of the Rec Center in the early 1950s, the Baker Lot was an important community park for tent shows and ball games. It's full name should read the COON BAKER LOT. Coon died under mysterious circumstances in August of 1914, the same month that Reverend McNeill's parsonage was burned and Buck was accused of having the fire set to burn out the preacher who had been campaigning against Buck's restricted vice district near the intersection of Range and East Burdeshaw Streets. 

 On May 6, 1918, Dothan Mayor Buck Baker's Mama died. During the next 23 months prior to his own death on March 26, 1920, Buck was a busy man. He married DHS Senior 1918 Eula Stagg in January of 1919 and took her to California for their honeymoon. In April, he was elected to the Board of Directors of the Dothan Fair Association. In May, he put his Mama's house and four acres between North Foster and North St. Andrews in Dixie up for sale. Also in May, the Baker family was featured in a big Montgomery Advertiser article headlined DOTHAN RICH IN MEN OF REAL VISION. In September, Buck and his new wife took two trips out west (both of these could have been to Hot Springs where Buck died in March 1920). In November, Buck served on the Committee for Hotels, Auditorium and Baggage for a Shriner Pilgrimage to the Dothan "Oasis." Then in December, the Montgomery Advertiser wrote that Buck had decided to run for a fourth term as Mayor of Dothan and that he'd donated $8,000 for the purchase of chimes and an echo organ for Foster St. Methodist. It was later reported that Buck made the donation in memory of his Mama. (from the May 7, 1919 SOUTHERN STAR and from the December 4, 1919 MONTGOMERY ADVERTISER)

 My Uncle Page Register (from the May 4, 1941 DOTHAN EAGLE)

 

"... the naturalistic tradition that glued these authors and their works together was the concept of the struggle between fiercely deterministic forces in the world and the individual's desire to exert freedom in the world. In other words, a reflection on Jean-Jacques Rousseau's quote, 'Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains,' is what Donald Prizer is striving for. He states, 'The naturalistic novelist is willing to concede that there are fundamental limitations to man's freedom, but he is unwilling to concede that man is thereby stripped of all value.' Based on this, Prizer came up with three recurring themes in naturalistic writing: 1) the tragic waste of human potential due to vile circumstances, 2) order (or the lack of), and 3) the individual's struggle to understand the forces affecting one's life."

Buck explain how "THE GAME" was played in Aven (downtown Dothan in 1890)

On page 53 and 54 of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD Buck explained to his Mama how "THE GAME" was played in Aven (downtown Dothan in 1890): "See here, the man that does the furnishin' makes mor'n the farmer. You know that [the Bakers owned a big general store between Headland and Tumbleton] . Rent him his land, sell him his tools, seeds, guano, anything he wants. He'll owe you and he won't like you. He'll cuss you, but you'll have to take it. He may kick you, but take it. Then, by God, if he makes a crop, take it."

His mother closed her eyes and Buck could see her face stiffen.

She tried to rock, but it wasn't a rocking chair. "That ain't our way," she said, shortly.

Buck laughed, bitterly, and it was ugly even to his ears.

"Them that furnishes live a long time," he said. "The land don't break them."

page 123 of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD

"Buck would try to convince himself that the storekeeper-furnisher took a chance and that big profits ought to come from big risks; then the thought would come to make him sweat, that whichever way the farmer moved, the storeman had him going and coming." http://privatepropertynotrespass.blogspot.com/

 Over six years after Buck's death, the BAKER POLITICAL MACHINE was still goin' FULL STEAM AHEAD ever' evenin' down in the sample room of the Hotel Martin with Buck's little brother, Dan Baker (1879-1954) at the throttle. (Dan was the model for the character of Jeff Bannon in DEVIL MAKE A THIRD~ clipping from the July 12, 1926 DOTHAN EAGLE)

 There is no doubt that the character of Buck Bannon in DEVIL MAKE A THIRD is completely fictional, however, much may be learned from parallels between this fictional character and THE REAL LIFE of four-term Mayor of Dothan Buck Baker (1869-1920). In the book, Buck Bannon astounds the citizens of Aven by adding the title "borderline child molester" to his list of public sins by marrying his "child bride" in a big church wedding. In REALITY, Dothan Mayor Buck Baker did a similar thing in January 1919 when he married DHS Senior 1918 Eula Stagg(1900-1957). In the book, Buck's Mama had to face the embarrassment of her son becoming the target of the town of Aven's gossip but in Dothan Buck Baker's case, his Mama probably only knew Eula from Foster St. Methodist because Mrs. Baker (1849-1918) had been dead a little of over six months when Buck and Eula got married. (from the January 30, 1919 PHENIX-GIRARD JOURNAL) 

 

 As I begin to describe the features, advantages and benefits of this book, the paperback reprint is selling online for almost $200 a copy.

 Chapter 1 Chapter 19

"Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves," Hearn said, suddenly, without smiling. "That's what she kept saying."

His mind suddenly was back to the first night he had spent in Aven, a night when the fear had found him alone. That fear- part of the fight between man and cotton, or man and land, or man and grass. Bermuda grass, lacing a foot deep into the richest soil, holding it against the heavy washing rains and fattening the topsoil for the day when a man would need it. Bermuda grass, friendly at first, then a part of the fight, dirt banker for the man, then making him earn it, making him go in there with a steel beam and a bull-tongue scooter and a mule that was willing to burn itself out alongside of a man. He shuddered, then looked back up at Hearn.
 "Shirtsleeves," he said, softly,"in three generations."

"She says it looks like we're fixin' to do it in one."

 

Chapter 29

 
"Chop cotton through the sun with a limber-handled hoe that whips and never hits the right place. Shovel manure into a wagon bed and shovel it out again on a garden that's got to be fed before it can feed you. Then plow in more of the man than the manure. Do you know what it means to take a chance and leave before your hands get crooked in a mold to fit a plow stock-to leave and not care, just because nothing can be worse than what you've got?"

 

Chapter 31

 His high-heeled cowboy boots with castoff hickory-striped trousers tucked in, his too-small had dented four times in a cavalry peak, his flowered vest, and his ever-present guitar were all there to laugh at.

"Can't sleep in but one bed at a time. Can't eat but three meals a day and be comfortable, or wear more that one suit at a time. Reckon if a fellow stretched that thinking out, he'd figure anything above what he needs is like a mill rock that he's got to drag along. If that's so, I'm toting a load."

Chapter 21

page 232-233 of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD

Buck carefully set his glass down on the bar, and his eyes narrowed suddenly. 

"Something wrong?"

 "Aw, Buck, you know what was happening when you left. Preachers and deacons and sisters and Epworth Leagues. Like a bunch of wood lice eating at a tree, and you can't see them until the tree falls down."

"Is it getting worse?"

Tobe knodded and lifted his glass and drank quickly.

"Buck," he said, leaning o the bar and frowning," they started the minute you left twon, working to beat hell." He began to mimic the women. "Licensed the fancy women, taxed the gamblers, graft, ungodly, drinks too much, gambles all night, and a woman ain't safe with him. Hell-fire." Tobe suddenly spat on the floor.

Buck's face relaxed.

"Nothing new in that."

Chapter 1: Buck to Jeff

"Don't let Papa make you plow the big mule, boy," he said, "Big John'll pure pull yore arms out at the sockets. But you got to quit sleepin' in the cotton rows when you ought to be choppin'."

Chapter 3

"I ain't got time to stop and build bridges when I come to a creek. I've got to jump to stay on schedule"

"Don't whine. A thief's a thief."

Chapter 8

"Papa, it's like you know when to plant. It ain't just knowin'; it's part feelin'. Well, I got that feelin'."

"Boy, ain't we movin' a mite fast?"

"Watch the barbershops, they follow the money. There ain't a one on our street."

Buck's charity

"Mother's feedin' whole milk to the pigs 'cause she ain't got time to churn. Wonder if you could run up some milkin' time and kinda spell her at the churn"

Virgil page 135 typo "whipered"

 My latest Devil Make a Third investigation is upon the character Virgil, the vagrant singing cowboy whose bohemian lifestyle appeals to Buck and for whom Buck risks his own life in the opera house fire at the end of the book.