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188 The Kentucky Anthology Irvin S. Cobb from Old Judge Priest West of Louisville, on the lower Ohio River, lived one of Kentucky’s best-known writers, Irvin S. Cobb. Born in 1876 in Paducah, in western Kentucky, Cobb wrote about his hometown with a deep, almost filial affection. There we find a typical Kentucky character from the early years of the twentieth century, the backwardlooking (he’s a Confederate veteran) but noble and gracious country judge who will go against the local grain if a woman (who is not even a lady) is in distress. In this case, she is dead and greatly in need of a decent Christian funeral. Unfortunately, none of the decent Christian churches in town will open their doors for her funeral —so says the madam for whom she has worked. Enter Irvin S. Cobb’s Judge Priest to the rescue. Following his initial introduction to American readers in such popular magazines as the Saturday Evening Post, then in book form in Back Home in 1912, the Judge became almost a folk hero and was featured in many new adventures—all set in Cobb’s beloved Paducah and the Jackson Purchase area; there was even a 1934 film starring Will Rogers. Cobb’s careers as a journalist, humorist, scriptwriter, and actor took him to Louisville, to New York, and finally to Hollywood, but he never really left home. He once said that he’d rather be an orphan in Kentucky than a twin anywhere else. In fact, he requested that his grave be marked with a simple stone and a plate with his name and dates and the line “I Have Come Back Home.” h This story begins with Judge Priest sitting at his desk at his chambers at the old courthouse. He strains to reach an especially itchy spot between his shoulder blades and addresses words to Jeff Poindexter, coloured, his body servant and house boy. “They ain’t so very purty to look at—red flannels ain’t,” said the judge. “But, Jeff, I’ve noticed this—they certainly are mighty lively company till you git used to ’em. I never am the least bit lonely fur the first few days after I put on my heavy underwear.” There was no answer from Jeff except a deep, soft breath. He slept. At a customary hour he had come with Mittie May, the white mare, and the buggy to take Judge Priest home to supper, and had found the judge engaged beyond his normal quitting time. That, however, had not discommoded Jeff. Jeff always knew what to do 188 John Fox Jr. 189 with his spare moments. Jeff always had a way of spending the long winter evenings. He leaned now against a book-rack, with his elbow on the top shelf, napping lightly. Jeff preferred to sleep lying down or sitting down, but he could sleep upon his feet too—and frequently did. Having, by brisk scratching movements, assuaged the irritation between his shoulder blades, the judge picked up his pen and shoved it across a sheet of legal cap that already was half covered with his fine, close writing. He never dictated his decisions, but always wrote them out by hand. The pen nib travelled along steadily for awhile. Eventually words in a typewritten petition that rested on the desk at his left caught the judge’s eye. “Huh!” he grunted, and read the quoted phrase, “‘True Believers’ AfroAmerican Church of Zion, sometimes called—” Without turning his head he again hailed his slumbering servitor: “Jeff, why do you-all call that there little church-house down by the river Possum Trot?” Mightily well Jeff understood the how and the why and the wherefore of the True Believers. He could have traced out step by step, with circumstantial detail, the progress of the internal feud within the despised congregation that led to the upspringing of rival sets of claimants to the church property, and to the litigation that had thrown the whole tangled business into the courts for final adjudication. But except in company of his own choosing and his own colour, wild horses could not have drawn that knowledge from Jeff, although it would have pained him to think any white person who had a claim upon his friendship suspected him of concealment of any detail whatsoever. . . . Further discussion of the affairs of the strange faith that was divided against itself might have ensued but that an interruption came. Judge Priest swung...

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