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Three New Tinker Fork Portraits by SCOTTY LEE HAMILTON Scotty Lee Hamilton now lives in Tekonsa, Michigan. He was born and grew up on Tinker Fork of Big Mud Creek in Floyd County, Kentucky, and finished two years at Alice Lloyd College in 1972. At that time he began writing a series of sketches which were titled Tinker Fork Portraits, depicting the life and people he had known. He has continued these and recently sent to Appahchian Heritage a large collection from which these were chosen. He included the following note: "The poems that I have that will truly show the flavor of Appalachian life and xcays (Tinker Fork) are just sentences and paragraphs, but I am going to gather all I have and just rewrite for a while. I probably have enough to last a lifetime now, so all I need is the will and the skill to write them to where they make sense." ART CONN Half-pints of Old Crow and two-dollar bills have played the leading role in building LAW around these parts. I know for a fact, because at some time or other during my short-live political career I have been responsible for the duties of such offices as: magistrate, circuit court clerk, district attorney, and various other lesser esteemed offices. Although I only had an eighth-grade education, the simple folk of Tinker Fork soon realized that I was bom with what you would call a 'natural talent' for making big, important, community-minded decisions. To give you some idea of my profound ability and pert persuasiveness, here are some of the highlights of my career. These so called 'tricks', 'assets', 'maneuvers', and 'ways', are necessary to any who would become great political leaders or men of distinction . I took naturally to telling a good clean lie and could look you straight in the face while doing so. In fact, I would walk clear to the north side of town to tell a lie on the south side. 44 I was forty kinds of crooks, a hypocrite, and an infidel. I was a scoundrel in the truest sense. I was as low down as a dead man's heel and as slick as a new pair of shoes. I kissed every ugly baby on Tinker Fork and attended weddings, funerals, cakewalks , shooting-matches, and Saturday night balls just to win the voter's confidence. And, I distributed freely, out of the goodness of my heart, warped pencils and faded picture-cards to the runny-nosed younguns of promising parents. Naturally, if I wanted to convert Christian voters I would have to pay them a visit around 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning so no one would see me come or go. You know, I've left many a ten-dollar bill in chairs behind me and still left feeling uncertain of their vote. If anybody ever pulled a fast one over me it was these folks. As it stood, however, I had minerss, teachers, bootleggers, preachers, lawyers and social-workers all licking sugar from the palms of my revolutionizing hands. But just for safety's sake, due to the fact that some folks slighted the polls each 'lection time, I had hundreds of extra voters who had vacated the area to live in the northern industrial cities to come back each year and vote. I had them trailing in from such far away places as Detroit, Springfield, Columbus, Dayton, and the grave. Those that didn't come got voted anyway. I had dedicated personnel attending the polls each year as well as others driving up in the hollers to fetch those out that couldn't drive or else had sick mules. I personally made a fevered attempt to be present at each individual poll as the attendant would lead the blind, retarded, and those that didn't read behind the curtains to match levers with the names called for. Those half-pints of Old Crow and two-dollar bills made all the difference in the world. So you see, by God, that I had everything going for me that would have led me to become a great political pie of...

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