INTERLUDE #2

Each of the novel's 12 INTERLUDES moves the novel's plot forward in time. In the case of INTERLUDE #2, the action occurs four months after Buck's visit to Mabe's Place the night he struck a deal with Longshore for the mortgage that enabled him to buy Green's store. Twenty year old Buck is now two years along in his successful business career.

The tragicomedy quality of Buck's billy goats' visit to Mabe's Place in Chapter 4 continues in INTERLUDE #2 as the story opens with Jake's arrival at the Aven freight depot aboard the No. 54 train from Albany. Jake is so hungover that simply walking is painful for him and not only that, he's broke and late paying on his loan from Buck. Jake meets his fellow brakeman, Bass, who brings more bad news by informing Jake that his watch is gone because Buck has left town. Jake tries to process this information and exclaims, "Wheeoo, watch gone, job gone." 

Jake's sad conclusion, causes Bass to show his railroading friend some sympathy and to reassure Jake that all is not lost and that Buck will soon return from his short trip back home. This news lifts Jake's spirits momentarily but as he contemplates the future of his watch, Jake says, "I don't like this. He'll lose it, or break it, or, by God, he'll swap it off for a rubber-tired buggy." 

Again Bass reassures Jake that Buck simply has gone back home to convince his parents to leave farm life and to move the entire family to Aven. This information only worsens Jake's bleak attitude because he knows that the demands of Buck's family will mean that Buck will become an even greedier pawnbroker and payday loan shark. 

INTERLUDE #2 ends with Bass finally agreeing with Jake's conclusion that the future of Jake's watch, as well as his brakeman job, were indeed rather gloomy simply because Buck "left in a rubber-tired buggy, all right."

In each of their conversations, Jake and Bass discuss their grievances with Buck  but they also discuss how Buck gives back to the same people he exploits. In the case of Jake, a hopeless victim of Buck's usurious lending practices, the years that this failed railroad brakeman spends working off his debt to Buck may give him status in the Aven community by Jake being one of "Buck's men" and of having the reputation of being commercially associated with Aven's most important decision maker, Buck Bannon.

The characters of Jake and Bass only appear in the novel's 12 Interludes and the progress of their lives and relationship gives the reader another window into the intimate details of Buck's life. Both of these undisciplined railroad brakemen allow their appetite for liquor and fast women to sink them into debt to Buck with no hope of recovery. The consequences of Buck's financial robbery are quite severe for Jake. INTERLUDE #2 will be the last time the reader will see Jake on a train. For the rest of the novel, Jake will never return to railroading and he will spend the rest of his time working odd jobs for Buck in order to pay off his debt. This form of debt slavery doesn't totally annihilate Jake's autonomy, however, his financial bondage to Buck will limit Jake's options and his only escape from continual debt would to be to move out of Aven and to run away.

The last line of INTERLUDE #2, "He left town in a rubber-tired buggy, all right,"also gives us insight into Buck's motivation. One of the first things that impressed Buck during his first morning in Aven was "a small neat buggy with new harness." That Buck chose to visit his parents' farm in a "rubber-tired buggy" shows that Buck is adapting to life in Aven by acquiring all of the status symbols associated with his small town business success.

I got me a new saying,"You can't cuss the cotton." I got it from my hero, BUCK BANNON, from the novel, DEVIL MAKE A THIRD. It refers to how a man makes his living. You can cuss all the things that hold you back from meeting your goals of growth but you CAN'T CUSS the stuff you are growing, only the stuff that prevents it from growing. To go in the other direction is a PRESCRIPTION FOR DISASTER & OBLIVION.

from page 191 of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD (Buck Bannon is talking to himself) "A man doesn't change, he develops. He makes, according to the things that happen to him, like a crop makes with the seasons. You can't cuss the cotton. You cuss the rain and the weevil that fester it. A man-you cuss the time he was hungry and couldn't get food or the time he wanted his wife and she-"

Throughout the book, Buck looks to the life of a cotton farmer to give himself his rules to live by, "Godamighty, it's just like I furnished a farmer- gave him land to work, seed to plant, and mules and tools. He'd do the best he could, I reckon. Looks like I got furnished with whatever I am, and it's up to me to do the best I can with what I've got. I don't go behind and look up a farmer tryin' to furnish him with some more. After I set him up, the rest is up to him."

 

 Page 44 of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD:

"Hey, Jake!"

Jake looked vaguely around the yard and his eyes hurt in the noon glare, but they picked out Bascom Wooten, sitting in the shade on top of a barrel of fish.

Jake slouched across toward Bascom, taking it easy because it hurt his head to walk.

"Hell," Bascom said, when Jake got close, "I heard you was dead."

Jake laughed hollowly.

"I mout as well be," he said, "Them Albany girls got my money and Buck Bannon's got my watch."

Bascom grinned and kicked his heels against the barrel.

"Fifty-four's on time," he said, cheerfully, "but you shore lost your watch."

Jake frowned and his head hurt some more.

"Aw," he said, "Buck wouldn't keep it. I was out o' town."

Bascom laughed and rocked the barrel, jarring the rims down so hard Jake could hear dull movement from the shifting contents.

"Buck's gone," Bascom said finally. "So is your watch."

Jake groaned and his hand yearned, fluttering toward his vest pocket.

"Wheeoo," he breathed, "watch gone, job gone."

Bascom came down off the barrel, then, and took Jake by the arm.

" 'F I didn't know how you feel," he said, shaking his head sorrowfully, "I'd keep it up. Buck's just gone home for a couple of days." (clippings from the October 9, 1908 Dothan Eagle and the October 27, 1953 Dothan Eagle) 

from the July 4, 1941 Phenix-Girard Journal 

The Dothan Eagle in 1931 reminisced about the importance of a "rubber-tired buggy" in turn-of-the-century courtship by asking who remembered when a "rubber-tired buggy" was "the acme of social triumphs" and "a team of matched horses to a rubber-tired buggy carried the same weight with girls as an 8-cylinder roadster carries today." 

 Laguna Beach History

 On September 5, 1935, the Phillips Inlet bridge on the Bay/Walton County line opened and later that month the 14,985 feet Apalachicola Bay Bridge also opened creating a Gulf route from Pensacola to Tallahassee. By the fall of 1936, over 200 cottages in the present-day Panama City Beach area were under construction with plans for them to be ready for the 1937 summer season. Birmingham's J.B. Lahan was one of these early developers and his subdivision became Laguna Beach.

 

 

from the October 29, 1936 WIREGRASS FARMER (Headland, AL) 

from the October 15, 1936 WIREGRASS FARMER [Headland, AL]

 from the April 14, 1935 PENSACOLA NEWS JOURNAL

 I've finished Chapter 4 of ROBERTOREG'S NOTES on DEVIL MAKE A THIRD. Now I only have to finish the notes on INTERLUDE #2 to have finished two major sections of my summary and commentary of the a work of fiction completely inspired by real people and events in my hometown of Dothan. Here's the first two paragraphs of my Chapter 4 commentary along with a link where you can read the entire thing.

CHAPTER 4

Chapter 4 opens with Buck finishing off a glass of whiskey in Aven's only saloon, a "Jim Crow" enterprise with a double ended pine bar that separated the races by means of a thin partition across the middle of the bar and serving its Black customers through a curved slot cut into the flimsy wall which allowed the banjo music from their end of the bar to entertain the saloon's entire crowd.

No matter how intelligent 20 year-old Buck might have been, Aven's corn liquor was guaranteed to help him do something stupid so he had sense enough before beginning his drunken evening to deposit in the saloon's safe the $500 down payment he'd taken to Longshore's house for the mortgage negotiation. As the bartender pours Buck one more for the road, he reminds Buck of how liquor stirs evil passions by paraphrasing a proverb from the Bible, "It stingeth like an adder and biteth like a serpent." This biblical reference may not be the only one in this chapter.   

https://privatepropertynotrespass.blogspot.com/2017/07/slave-labor-httpsarmyhistory.html

CHAPTER 4

Chapter 4 opens with Buck finishing off a glass of whiskey in Aven's only saloon, a "Jim Crow" enterprise with a double ended pine bar that separated the races by means of a thin partition across the middle of the bar and serving its Black customers through a curved slot cut into the flimsy wall which allowed the banjo music from their end of the bar to entertain the saloon's entire crowd.

No matter how intelligent 20 year-old Buck might have been, Aven's corn liquor was guaranteed to help him do something stupid so he had sense enough before beginning his drunken evening to deposit in the saloon's safe the $500 down payment he'd taken to Longshore's house for the mortgage negotiation. As the bartender pours Buck one more for the road, he reminds Buck of how liquor stirs evil passions by paraphrasing a proverb from the Bible, "It stingeth like an adder and biteth like a serpent." This biblical reference may not be the only one in this chapter.

Buck had a lot on his mind. Not only was he going to close on his first mortgage the next day but he was now sitting on a bar stool lost in lust while his mind's eye attempted to recall every detail of Longshore's gorgeous  daughter. There was no way Buck was going to accomplish anything listening to the saloon's banjo music and dreaming about the blonde-headed eye candy he'd just left at Longshore's house. Buck's barroom boredom could easily be eliminated with only a short walk from the saloon through Baptist Bottom to the place where Buck's payday loan customers spent the money they borrowed from him: Mabe's whorehouse. Buck's customers were also the customers of Mabe's girls and on this night Buck decided to get stupid just like the rest of them and to seek satisfaction in the arms of one of Aven's lewd women. As Buck told the bartender before he left the saloon, " I'm a'goin' to Mabe's Place and kiss all the girls and run climb a tree an' wait for them to cut me down."

Like the moon on that night when Buck first walked into Aven sixteen months earlier, the moonlight on this foggy evening filled liquored-up Buck with a sense of the potential power he'd discovered which assured him that he would one day achieve his destiny and make a fortune from Aven's populace but the corn liquor he'd consumed guaranteed that this late night stroll was not going to contribute to his future fortune. Like the maxim "nothing good ever happens after midnight", Buck's evening ramble to Mabe's Place would never fulfill the promises the moonlight was making.

As he walked through muddy Baptist Bottom, a stumbling, drunken Buck encountered a street corner preacher who was just ending the sermon he was preaching to a crowd gathered on the street in front of a honky tonk called the Puddin' House. Buck immediately requests that the reverend "Preach me some hell-fire and alligator teeth."

The Black preacher, an experienced salesman, immediately sizes Buck up and begins a series of questions, each one ending with the preacher calling Buck, apparently a total stranger, the "boss." By calling Buck "boss", the preacher was going through all the motions that showed him to be a "good, humble Negro" while at the same time setting Buck up to purchase "a pair o' fine billy goats, Boss, which'd make mighty pretty pets" for the whores Buck was about to meet at the brothel just beyond Baptist Bottom.

Possibly as an allusion to the bizarre biblical story in Genesis of Judah promising to pay for the services of the Bible's first prostitute with a goat, the author of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD has his protagonist tugging a pair of billy goats into an elaborately decorated den of iniquity. Taking goats inside a whorehouse is a prescription for disaster and the destruction the charging goats' horns made of the bordello's mirrors and vases ends this chapter with the brothel owner telling Buck, "Even a whore has got feelin's and if a fellow can't earn the name of a gentleman in a whorehouse, he won't get it nowhere." 

Stung by the insult, Buck sobers up a little and makes a prophetic statement on this night before he was to sign his first mortgage with Longshore , "There'll be a man out here tomorrow mornin' to fix your place back. I don't give a damn about bein' a gentleman, but, by God, I'll be payin' my debts, till I die."

No doubt that the man who would show up the next morning to repair Buck's damage to Mabe's Place would also be one of his payday loan customers who was paying off part of his debt by doing day labor for Buck. Buck's repair job and his replacement of the broken furniture also had him investing in Mabe's lucrative sex-trade business and subsequent events would show that Buck's attempt to make right his senseless destruction would enhance his reputation with Mabe as well as with the girls who worked for him.

 Monroe Page is the model for the Puddin' House preacher:

On page 38 of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD, a drunken Buck Bannon puts his money in the barroom's safe and leaves Aven's only saloon. On his way walking to the local brothel, Buck encounters a street corner preacher in front of a Baptist Bottom juke joint. I contend that Monroe Page (1870-1960), Dothan building contractor, landlord, farmer and undertaker was the model for the character of the Puddin' House preacher.

In the series of questions and statements,  the preacher makes to Buck, he addresses Buck, an apparent stranger, as "boss": "Ain't you kinda lit up, boss"; "You headin' down yonder, boss?"; "You takin' 'em anything, boss?"; "Boss, whore ladies likes a little somethin' on the side."; "Now, I got a pair o' fine billy goats, Boss..." And after calling a complete stranger "boss" five times, the preacher closes the deal for the goats by referring to Buck as "White Cap'n". The preacher's behavior is the epitome of the Southern ideal of the "good, humble negro" which is exactly the reputation that Dothan's Monroe Page cultivated. Monroe Page may have fit the image of the "good, humble Negro" but he wasn't going to the underpaid "good, humble Negro." For all his humility, his plans included striking a deal and taking a profit and if "humble" worked, Mr. Page used it just as he would use a tool. When Page's throat was cut in March of 1924, the injustice and brutality of the attack was condemned in a petition signed by 37 of the top businessmen in Dothan and printed on the front page of the paper. (from the March 19, 1924 Dothan Eagle) 

In the series of questions and statements, the preacher makes to Buck, he addresses Buck, an apparent stranger, as "boss": "Ain't you kinda lit up, boss"; "You headin' down yonder, boss?"; "You takin' 'em anything, boss?"; "Boss, whore ladies likes a little somethin' on the side."; "Now, I got a pair o' fine billy goats, Boss..." And after calling a complete stranger "boss" five times, the preacher closes the deal for the goats by referring to Buck as "White Cap'n". The preacher's behavior is the epitome of the Southern ideal of the "good, humble negro" which is exactly the reputation that Dothan's Monroe Page cultivated. Monroe Page may have fit the image of the "good, humble Negro" but he wasn't going to the underpaid "good, humble Negro." For all his humility, his plans included striking a deal and taking a profit and if "humble" worked, Mr. Page used it just as he would use a tool. When Page's throat was cut in March of 1924, the injustice and brutality of the attack was condemned in a petition signed by 37 of the top businessmen in Dothan and printed on the front page of the paper. (from the March 19, 1924 Dothan Eagle)

Dougie Bailey risked censorship using the term "whore ladies" in his novel. In 1977, the Eden Valley, Minnesota school board banned To Kill A Mockingbird from its libraries because it included the term "whore lady." (from the December 2, 1977 St. Cloud Times) 

page 40 of Devil Make A Third: "White Cap'n, I's got one more payment due on a leetle burial plot. You kin have them two goats for a dollah each." (from the September 18, 1928 Dothan Eagle)  

As far as Monroe Page having some goats for sale, Monroe had the reputation of being an outstanding farmer.

from the May 12, 1955 Dothan Eagle

from the June 1, 1941 Dothan Eagle

It's also easy to see a "Monroe Page" character preaching in front of a juke joint. Page owned an amusement park in Dothan. from the July 20, 1938 Dothan Eagle

from the July 31, 1935 SOUTHERN STAR (Ozark)

from the June 17, 1936 LaFayette Sun

 

from the September 19, 1934 Daily Mountain Eagle

from the October 18, 1920 Gadsden Times

I used "Louise" for Louie Herzberg Bailey because of a numerous clippings

In response to a Facebook comment by Charles Senna concerning his memories of Tuscaloosa's demolished Buck House (circa 1854-1950), I wanted to find a newspaper clipping about the Buck family who were the last owners of the old house which once stood on the northeast corner of 19th Avenue and University Boulevard. I decided to search newspapers.com for "MRS. BUCK" TUSCALOOSA. I stared at the first of the 9,499 clippings resulting from my search  in complete awe and astonishment.

Ya see, me working on a Facebook post about the Buck House is considered a total distraction and a complete waste of time when viewed from the perspective of MY BIG AGENDA which is to have a book about the 1948 novel DEVIL MAKE A THIRD ready for publication by 2023, the 75th anniversary of the printing of the first edition. Well, IN REALITY, my BUCK HOUSE DISTRACTION hit PAYDIRT! I found it in a small 21-word clipping from the April 9, 1910 Tuscaloosa News.

So who is "Annie Laurie Longshore" and what's she got to do with the novel DEVIL MAKE A THIRD?

Two months after this April of 1910 visit for the Senior Dance at BAMA,  18-year-old Annie Laurie married 39-year-old Sam Friedman and a year later she gave birth to girl named Helen. Helen would grow up to become Helen Friedman Blackshear, poet laureate of the State of Alabama and mother of my late friend Len Stevenson. 

Many years later in 1937, the author of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD, Dothan's Dougie Bailey, would marry one of Sam and Annie Laurie Friedman's nieces, Gadsden's Louise Herzberg. While writing his novel, Dougie decided he liked his wife's Aunt Annie Laurie Friedman' maiden name of LONGSHORE and used it as the last name for the character of "Amos Longshore", the banker in Bailey's turn-of-the-19th-century period novel and modeled after Dothan's first banker, Captain G.Y.R. Malone (1830-1906).

So I guess in the long run, I didn't waste any time looking for a BUCK HOUSE CLIPPING and ended up fitting this time into MY BIG AGENDA!

Another Tuscaloosa connection to the novel Devil Make A Third is Hudson Strode. Dougie Bailey studied under Strode and Strode helped him sell his manuscript to a publisher.(from the April 24, 1963 Dothan Eagle)    

 In response to a Facebook comment by Charles Senna concerning his memories of Tuscaloosa's demolished Buck House (circa 1854-1950), I wanted to find a newspaper clipping about the Buck family who were the last owners of the Buck House which once stood on the northeast corner of 19th Avenue and University Boulevard. I decided to search newspapers.com for "MRS. BUCK" TUSCALOOSA. I stared at the first 20 or so of the 9,499 clippings resulting from the search and clicked one from the April 9, 1910 TUSCALOOSA NEWS. I stared at my first selection in complete awe and astonishment.

Ya see, me working on a Facebook post about Buck House is considered a complete waste of time when viewed from the perspective of MY BIG AGENDA which is to have a book about the 1948 novel DEVIL MAKE A THIRD ready for publication by 2023, the 75th anniversary of the printing of the first edition of the novel. Well, IN REALITY, my BUCK HOUSE DISTRACTION hit PAYDIRT! 

From the April 9, 1910 Tuscaloosa News

So who is "Annie Laurie Longshore" and what's she got to do with the novel DEVIL MAKE A THIRD?

Two months after this April of 1910 visit for the Senior Dance at BAMA,  18-year-old Annie Laurie married 39-year-old Sam Friedman and a year later she gave birth to girl named Helen. Helen would grow up to become Helen Friedman Blackshear, poet laurette of the State of Alabama and mother of my late friend Len Stevenson. 

Many years later in 1937, the author of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD, Dothan's Dougie Bailey, would marry one of Sam and Annie Laurie Friedman's nieces, Gadsden's Louise Herzberg. While writing his novel, Dougie decided he liked his wife's Aunt Annie Laurie Friedman' maiden name of LONGSHORE and used it as the last name for the character of "Amos Longshore", the banker in Bailey's turn-of-the-19th-century period novel. 

So I guess in the long run, I didn't waste any time looking for a BUCK HOUSE CLIPPING and ended up fitting this time into MY BIG AGENDA!

So here's the DEVIL MAKE A THIRD connection: 

“This interesting example of the Gothic Revival as it appears in home-building was constructed about 1850 by Lucian Van Buren Martin, with bricks made on site by slaves. Walls fourteen inches thick, plastered over, and painted to imitate stone. Then were added steep roof, sharp gables, tall stucco chimneys, and painted windows, characteristic of the Gothic. The whole lavishly trimmed with jigsaw work. Heavy paneled front door of walnut, framed in ruby glass.”

The Old Buck Boarding House, at 1816 Broad St. (now University Boulevard) just west of Queen City Avenue, was built around 1850. Ownership of the house changed many times over the years, but the James Hall Buck family owned it for many years. Records show that it was deeded to a Buck daughter, Nellie Buck Morris, in 1926. The house provided boarding for state dignitaries when Tuscaloosa was the state capitol and was later used for apartments. The house was demolished in 1950.

The obituary of James Hall Buck, sent by Barry Newman, shows that Nellie Buck Morris was one of six girls and two boys born to Mr. and Mrs. James Hall Buck. Born in Virginia in 1835, Buck had lived in Tuscaloosa since 1875. His parents were distinguished; his mother was the niece of President James Madison. At 25, Buck was a captain in the service of the confederacy and served with gallantry throughout the war.

His active career in Tuscaloosa was that of planter on the beautiful “Buck Place” a few miles east of the city, but he had been in poor health long before his death in 1906.

The slave house that stood behind the Buck House still stands, but the owner is petitioning to tear it down. Delaying demolition or restoration will allow Mother Nature to destroy it. Note the collapsing roof in the photo.

Thomas Kuhn (1970) observed that science does not progress linearly through a gradual extension of knowledge within one framework; his proposition was a progression through periodic revolutionary upheavals which he called paradigm shifts. He suggested that the discovery of irreconcilable shortcomings in an established framework produces a crisis that may lead to overturning the paradigm and ushering in a new one. Revolutions are never an easy experience and most of us prefer to engage in evolution, where changes happen gradually, often unnoticed, and no-one is unsettled.

http://www.isocarp.net/Data/case_studies/2341.pdf

 page 209 of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD:

"Tom," the little Governor said, throwing back his coattails and sticking his hands deep in his pockets,"you can charm the birds out of the trees, but filibusterin' is just manure on the grave of States' Rights. Forget 'em. The big fight is the Pittsburgh Plus freight rate. It'll last long enough to keep you in Washington for life."  

["The grave of States Rights" was the defeat of the South's secession during the Civil War. The "Pittsburgh Plus freight rate" was the steel industry's custom of charging all steel manufactured in the U.S. based upon Pittsburgh steel prices plus always adding Pittsburgh freight rates no matter where the steel was shipped from. This form of price fixing and economic discrimination was declared illegal in 1924 but the steel industry ignored the Federal government and continued to fix prices to discriminate against Alabama-made steel. ] (clipping from the October 16, 1934 BIRMINGHAM NEWS)

 page 209 of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD:

"Tom," the little Governor said, throwing back his coattails and sticking his hands deep in his pockets,"you can charm the birds out of the trees, but filibusterin' is just manure on the grave of States' Rights. Forget 'em. The big fight is the Pittsburgh Plus freight rate. It'll last long enough to keep you in Washington for life."  

["The grave of States Rights" was the defeat of the South's secession during the Civil War. The "Pittsburgh Plus freight rate" was the steel industry's custom of charging all steel manufactured in the U.S. based upon both Pittsburgh steel prices plus always adding Pittsburgh freight rates not matter where the steel was shipped from. This form of price fixing and economic discrimination was declared illegal in 1924 but the steel industry ignored the Federal government continued to fix prices to discriminate against Alabama-made steel. ] (clipping from the October 16, 1934 BIRMINGHAM NEWS)

 page 213 of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD:

Jeff shrugged and nodded briefly. Buck went back to the bar. Governor Thrasher raised his glass, theatrically.

"To the Emancipation of Woman." He paused slightly. "Every night," he said, softly.

Buck laughed and looked at his glass.

(newspaper clipping from the February 7, 1918)

Mrs. Scottie McKenzie Frazier was a pioneering female journalist from Dothan. She traveled to Europe to interview Italian Prime Minister Mussolini and from 1938 to 1942, she published her own newspaper in Dothan called the ALABAMA DIGEST. From 1916 until 1920, she was head of the Dothan Equal Suffrage Organization. 

 This post is more evidence that the character of Millie Bannon in DEVIL MAKE A THIRD is modeled after the author's mother, Willie Baker Bailey. Mrs. Bailey's husband, Whack Bailey, was a noted baseball player in both Dothan and in his hometown of Opelika. (clippings from the July 19, 1905 MONTGOMERY ADVERTISER and the July 8, 1911 DOTHAN EAGLE)

 Chapter 30, page 330:

"Bah!" his mother said, then she moved her eyes sharply straight ahead at Millie.

 "That'n now. She'll never get a real man-ain't built for it." 

Millie stood up straight and put her hands on her hips. "I don't know," she said. She moved to the side so her mother could see her and pulled her long skirt up nearly to her knees."If skirts were this short, I'd be beating them off." 

 "Humph! All baseball players, too."

 Millie dropped her skirt and glared at her mother. She didn't say anything, and the room suddenly was very quiet. 

"Baseball players?" Buck's quick words cut deliberately into the quiet. Millie nodded and her hands went back onto her hips.

"What of it?" She looked back at her mother defiantly. Lota cleared her throat to speak, but Buck squeezed her hand and stopped her.

"I never could understand," he said, thoughtfully, "how come you girls don't marry better. You're all right pretty, and I never saw either one of you with a dirty neck."

"Now, you just wait." Millie said her words slowly with a space between each. Her head went from side to side as she spoke. "As long as you've been living in Aven and running around with senators and bankers and really big men, you never introduced either of us to a man." She stopped abruptly and clenched her teeth. "Why?"

Buck didn't answer, but he felt a flush coming up his face. He let her eyes hold his for a moment, then shifted them uneasily to his mother.

"Think that over," Millie said distinctly, and turned quickly and walked out, closing the door softly behind her.

The silence was heavy until Jeanie Bannon said, "Whew, boy, she laid it on heavy, didn't she?" 

 "1906" is the only date I have found in the novel DEVIL MAKE A THIRD. That year appears in a speech given by Alabama Governor Thrasher at the Harrison House Hotel in Aven. I believe the characters of Governor and Mrs. Thrasher are modeled after Alabama Congressman H.D. Clayton, Jr. and his wife.

from page 215 of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD:

"Now," he said, "I want to tell you about these boys and the honor they've done me." He held his head back and looked thoughtfully up at a corner of the room. "Back in 1906, it was. I was campaigning and , as the Senator can tell you, a campaigner is going to drift down to Buck Bannon or get detoured." 

(from the July 23, 1910 DOTHAN EAGLE)

page 229 and 230 of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD:

"Hurrying home, I believe that," Buck said, firmly, "but I've got too many enemies to believe anybody wants me to run for Congress."

Lota pushed him in the chest.

"Kill-joy," She turned away, swaggered across the drawing room, and stood by the door with one hand on her hip. "Well, I'll go to Washington without you and I'll eat nothing but fried chicken and champagne."

Buck steered her out of the door into the narrow passageway and closed the door behind him. 

"You'll go to Aven," he said, "and eat nothing but sowbelly and collards."

(clipping from the May 4, 1943 St. Louis Star & Times)