More Selections From J. W. Hall And Uncle Frank Tackett

View of Hazard, Ky., late 1890's More Selections From J. W. Hall And Uncle Frank Tackett /. W. Hall, a native of the Kentucky HiUs and a Lawyer, wrote a great deal about the area, of the older ways of life and events with which he was very familiar. One of his most unusual pieces was The Autobiography of Old Clabe Jones which he copied down from the telling of the famous old feudist himself. In much of the material from which these selections were made, the author uses Uncle Frank Tackett, a famous mountaineer raconteur of tall tales and other experiences, as a narrator, especially for events before and shortly after the Civil War, but many events come from first hand knowledge of the author. A good many changes have been made in the punctuation for clearer or easier reading, but other than that the selections remain as they appear in the manuscript. A VISIT TO HAZARD I said Uncle Frank, While Wells and Allen are trying to make lawyers and I trim my pencil, I will tell you of my visit to Perry County. I arrived at the town of Hazard, the capítol of Perry, and my first impression of the town and its people as I stood and gazed upon the small rough cottage houses that stood on top, and more often up a29 gainst, the small moundlike cedar knobs that is more abundant than elsewhere along the Kentucky River Valley, And as I noticed the tall, gaunt men and women walking about with a long swinging, swaggering stride of a gait, many of the women more than six feet tall with wrinkley, looseskin faces with traces of anger and marks of numerous brain storms, with an occasional broad smile, usually puncuated with a short, course laughter and a long stare and a very much disgusting frown appearantly reserved for strangers—was that the primative inhabitants were highland Scotch, spiked with English and Irish who had perhaps wondered in among these stalwart mountaineers, and getting lost or falling in love, was afraid to leave. One couple in particular attracted my attention—a small Irish-looking man about five feet high walking inside the sidewalk with his wife who could not have possibly been less than six feet tall. I was told that he was a lawyer who had come from another county, and the tall lady who was now his wife simply chose him for a husband and then by threats and intimidations with her father's Winchester compelled him to marry her but that he was making good in the law practice and was considered a good citizen. A few ramshackled, board buildings, called store houses, showed conspicuously on front street. A small fruit store across the street with a barrel of apples sitting in front on the sidewalk attracted my attention as a small blue cow come walking up and thrust her head into the barrel and began eating the apples when a long, lean, lank, Scotchman rushed out of the door, giving the small cow a kick in the side, sending her tumbling into the street ten feet away overturning the barrel of apples as she went, spilling the contents on the sidewalk. Several barefooted boys made a dive for the apples, falling over each other in their rush for the apples, seizeing their hands full and then scampering away like rats behind some adjoining buildings and peering form behind the house, gnawing away on the apples in derision of the keeper of the fruit stand. Thirty or forty dogs of all sizes and different varieties were playing in the streets. The charred remains of a once famous Temple of Justice called a court house when it was standing marked the encient site of the first building in the mountains dedicated to the memory of Oliver Hazard Perry of Naval fame. I was told that the court house was burned by one faction of the notorious French and Eversole feud trying to destroy the records of the court to escape prosecution if possible . About the time my first informant began to lose some of the enthusiasm in narrating to me the history of...