Clear Springs (47 page)

Portions of this book first appeared in somewhat different form in
The New Yorker
. I am grateful to my editor and friend there, Roger Angell.

Some material about the Cuba Cubs is drawn from my story “State Champions,” first published in
Harper’s
. Some small bits about my childhood reading and writing appeared in my book
The Girl Sleuth
, first published by the Feminist Press, 1975.

The story of Peyton Washam, the hapless pioneer, is from
Kentucky: A History of the State
by J. H. Battle, W. H. Perrin, and G. C. Kniffin, 1885.

The 1880 map of Clear Springs is from
An Atlas of Graves County, Kentucky
, published by D. J. Lake & Co., Philadelphia, 1880.

Harriette Simpson Arnow’s imaginative re-creations of life on the Middle Tennessee frontier—
Seedtime on the Cumberland
and
Flowering of the Cumberland
—inspired and informed my journey into the past. Through those books, I was able to imagine the trail of most of my ancestors, especially the Masons, who traveled down the Cumberland River to Western Kentucky in the 1820s.

Most of my genealogical research was done at the Kentucky Historical Society and the Graves County Library. I’m especially grateful to Don Simmons for his privately published transcriptions of miles of microfilm of local records and abstracts from Mayfield newspapers. These helped me form a clearer picture of Clear Springs and its inhabitants in earlier days.

As always, I am indebted to Lon Carter Barton, Graves County’s historian, and Thomas D. Clark, Kentucky’s historian laureate, for their profoundly insightful guidance into the past.

My thanks to Erika Brady, folklorist at Western Kentucky State
University, Bowling Green, Kentucky, for her research help, especially for locating the words to the song “Steamboat Bill.”

For reminiscences of Robert Hazel, I am grateful to Wendell Berry, Kyra Hackley, James Baker Hall, John Kuehl, Ed McClanahan, Gurney Norman, and David Polk.

For critical readings of the work in progress, I am grateful to Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, James Baker Hall, Cori Jones, Lauren Lepow, Kate Medina, and Binky Urban. Special thanks to Lila Havens.

The names of a few individuals who play minor roles in this narrative have been changed to assure privacy.

I appreciate the permission from my friends Frank Cantor, James Baker Hall, and Guy Mendes to reproduce photographs they took.

I salute my many Clear Springs cousins, whose heritage I am proud to share. And I am indebted to everyone in my family for their indulgence—especially to my mother, who has always been my chief inspiration.

My husband’s encouragement and confidence in this project were essential.

About the Author

Bobbie Ann Mason is the author of the novels
In Country
and
Feather Crowns. Feather Crowns
was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Southern Book Award. Her short-story collection
Shiloh and Other Stories
won the PEN/Hemingway Award for First Fiction and was nominated for other major prizes. Her fiction has appeared in
The New Yorker
and elsewhere.

Five generations of her family, going back to the 1820s, are rooted in the farming community of Clear Springs. She lives in Kentucky now with her husband and dogs and cats.