05-25-2023, 04:31 AM
Tobacco farm, East Tennessee, 1975
Drove there in my ’59 Chevrolet Apache, a plywood platform built onto the bench seat
so my border collie could sit next to me, and see the trip.
Spent the night next to a lake in an Arkansas State Park. Across the lake some kind of power plant. I fell asleep looking at it's lights. Made it to Tennessee next day, got lost in the backroads trying to find Dennis* and Tiki’s house rented from a tobacco farmer named Ike Snap.
When I was lost on the backroads I saw that all the farmers seem to have single syllable, onomapoeic names, like Clack or Snap.
Learned to plant tobacco and told the farmer about Texas. He saw it as a desert, like in The Searchers. In the son-in-law’s mobile home, ate lunch off a long formica table with the Snap family, a lunch that would have been supper in Texas.
Hauled hay with a Snap relative, his son and a hill man who was completely illiterate. “Watch out Dad, or it’s back to Green Acres” the son called out to the father, a family joke, since he’d been institutionalized at one time.
Met a sculptor in Jonesboro, a friend of Dennis. We were supposed to go to a play, but missed the opening and Dennis exploded, so the night ended. When I got home, I sent the sculptor a copy of Pound’s Gaudier Brzeska.
That’s all I can remember, I hope it’s enough.
Drove there in my ’59 Chevrolet Apache, a plywood platform built onto the bench seat
so my border collie could sit next to me, and see the trip.
Spent the night next to a lake in an Arkansas State Park. Across the lake some kind of power plant. I fell asleep looking at it's lights. Made it to Tennessee next day, got lost in the backroads trying to find Dennis* and Tiki’s house rented from a tobacco farmer named Ike Snap.
When I was lost on the backroads I saw that all the farmers seem to have single syllable, onomapoeic names, like Clack or Snap.
Learned to plant tobacco and told the farmer about Texas. He saw it as a desert, like in The Searchers. In the son-in-law’s mobile home, ate lunch off a long formica table with the Snap family, a lunch that would have been supper in Texas.
Hauled hay with a Snap relative, his son and a hill man who was completely illiterate. “Watch out Dad, or it’s back to Green Acres” the son called out to the father, a family joke, since he’d been institutionalized at one time.
Met a sculptor in Jonesboro, a friend of Dennis. We were supposed to go to a play, but missed the opening and Dennis exploded, so the night ended. When I got home, I sent the sculptor a copy of Pound’s Gaudier Brzeska.
That’s all I can remember, I hope it’s enough.
