Gurney Norman, Kentucky Coal Field Orphan, Is Gurney Stronger Than History, or What?

FEATURED AUTHOR—GURNEY NORMAN Gurney Norman, Kentucky Coal Field Orphan, Is Gurney Stronger Than History, or What?______________________ James Baker Hall There he is in the lookout on top of the mountain! Binoculars, books, a typewriter; and a tape recorder. Surrounding him on the walls are envelopes, thousands of envelopes, one for each day he's lived. When he recollects he writes his recollection down and puts it in its proper place. He might be the only man alive who remembers that day in 1944 when Max Terhune and his talking dummy performed in the ballpark in Pennington Gap, Virginia. Gurney's frail father left early on a Greyhound for the VA hospital, his belongings in a paper sack. Gurney's mother, hiding behind doors, was unhinged. His paranoid uncle kept him up at night with a gun. His granny bought a souped-up Chevy with Grandad's cataract money. Listen to them rocker arms, she'd say, you can't trust nobody about nothing no more. Gurney's brother died in pieces on a railroad track. Betrayal, loneliness, and loss, church boarding schools with faggot coaches, hemorrhages on the kitchen floor, kinfolks fighting, failure, guilt, abandonment, madness, kinfolks sick and helpless, deaths in institutions, there were shootings, and finally the strip miners came, poisoned the wells and tore the very mountains down. And yet, returning from his Grandad's funeral, Gurney brought a suitcase full of Moonpies, had a Moonpie and Dr. Pepper party, then dropped acid on blast off for Apollo 11 at six the next morning. The trick is, he says, is to live in the present, not the past or the future. The trick, I believe, is to live like Gurney, in all three! He says that all is as good as it could be, 16 and when he says that, who am I to say it isn't true? I think that Gurney is the three gay-eyed Chinamen climbing the mountain in the great Yeats poem! Praise Gurney, he's the King of the Mountain! See page 2 for acknowledgement of previous publication. 17 18 ...