The Case Of Scotty Hamilton And Tinker Fork

The Case Of Scotty Hamilton And Tinker Fork During the 1970-71 school year, a rather reticent, auburn-haired freshman signed up for a short - term writing course at Alice Lloyd College. He revealed under questioning that he really wanted to write songs (he played the guitar), but finally elected as his class project to try a series of sketches and portraits of his home community somewhat in the manner of Spoon River Anthology or Robinson's Tilbury Town Characters. Eighteen thematically related poems resulted. Later they were printed in a small booklet with the title Tinker Fork Portraits because Scotty Hamilton was born on Tinker Fork of Big Mud Creek in Floyd County, Kentucky . Tinker Fork Portraits were important to us then and are now for very real reasons. We never thought of them as "great" poems; for any nit - picker could detect small flaws of technique or tone in most of them. And Scotty himself had almost precluded any such label in the closing "Tinker Fork": "Greatness was not her ambition, - (Nor has she achieved)." In all the poems there is the deep sense of being in the "know," that all pretenses are down, whether it is in the epitaph - like portraits of characters speaking back in terse, idiomatic realism the truth of their existence on earth; or whether the poet - author halting the tour of Tinker Fork country to comment on some landmark of cultural experience. No poem is without a telling phrase or image, and some make remarkable use of local idiom (the community's imagination) as in "Freeman Wells," the loner: "I always said a friend was one - Who would say howdy and move on--" Or in "Willy Jones," the alcoholic: "I drunk so much alcohol - That the flies would get drunk on my spit." Or Johnny "Slacker" Johnson, the coal loader: "I died with my boots on. - And the steel toes were crushed - Together like a thimble Under a sewing machine lid." There is humor in the sketches and portraits, more often a sardonic humor in the epitaphs, but sometimes a more genial humor in some of the general sketches. But the Portraits are important in a different way. They tell us of small mining communities, sometimes still almost rural, where-if an older way of life is fast disappearing - there is still some memory of it in gardens, upright cornfields, 'possum hunts, songs, and tale - telling. They also avoid in their hard honesty the burlesque, sentimentality , and moralism that is often too characteristic of folksong and country verse. We wish there had been fifty instead of eighteen portraits. When we began work on Appalachian Heritage early last summer and decided to use some of Tinker Fork Portraits, Scotty Hamilton had already "said howdy and moved on." He had finished his two years at the College, graduating in May, 1971. We had had no word from him in over a year. During his last year at school he had continued to write, often experimenting in technique, tone, attitude . But several of the newer poems seemed comfortable along with earlier Tinker Fork ones. We wrote him for permission to use earlier and later poems, addressing the letter to his home post office in Floyd County with the request that it be forwarded. A month later we received this reply from Albion, Michigan: "I just got your letter today if you think I am taking my time answering it. . . You may publish any of my poems that you like. I wouldn't want anybody to read the few poems I have written since school, so you know what you have to choose from." We were not too surprised to learn that Scotty is working in a foundry in Albion, Michigan. Like most of us in Southern 46 A.F.S. Appalachia, he had kinfolks and friends who had had to move on. We knew he had worked there during summer vacations earlier. We now leave the reader to comtemplate selections from Tinker Fork Portraits and speculate on the destiny that sent Scotty Hamilton from Tinker Fork to a foundry in Albion, Michigan. A.F.S. Selections From Tinker Fork Portraits By Scotty Lee Hamilton Bread Of...