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)