Sonovagun Stew: A Folklore Miscellany Page: 10
xii, 171 p. : ill., ports. ; 24 cm.View a full description of this book.
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within its boundaries is completely delighted with my books. Maybe some
think I've stolen their stuff, but I believe it's usually because they think, rightly
or wrongly, that they or someone kin to them have been depicted in a not
entirely complimentary light, and for many folks, it seems, if a depiction isn't
complimentary it must be uncomplimentary. These mild resentments show up
in the form of people who don't greet me very warmly at the post office and
things like that. Once, after my Hard Scrabble book was published, and I
was worrying a little about some such occurrence-yes, it does bother me-my
state of mind was not in the least soothed when a very sly and furtive old
native got me off in a corner and said, "Man, if I'd a known you was going to
write that kind of a book, I sure could a told you some stories."
Maybe the worst trouble I ever had in this respect, though, came from
my use of material from the relatively remote past. This involved the Truitt-
Mitchell feud in my area in the 1870s or so, which I utilized in Goodbye
to a River to symbolize the displacement of the old, direct, rough fron-
tiersmen, the Mitchells, by the more civilized and subtle-minded newcomers
as exemplified in the Truitts. There were disagreements and fights and kill-
ings, and the patriarch of the Mitchell clan, named Nelson Mitchell but known
as Cooney, was publicly hanged in Granbury for his participation, though
there was widespread belief then and later that he wasn't any guiltier than
anybody else. Then there was some further bloody and dramatic stuff over
the years, culminating when Cooney Mitchell's son Bill tracked the Reverend
James Truitt to his new home at Timpson in East Texas and shot him out
of an armchair while his family looked on. It was all a nice, big, gory, Texas-
sized mess.
Anyhow, I read everything I could find about the feud, and I talked with
some old-timers, most of whom at least knew things their parents and uncles
and aunts had said. I ended up with a bunch of conflicting information, and
when I used it in the book, I shaped it and selected from it to suit my
purpose-this being, as I've said, to illustrate a specific social change. Even
in the text I was frank about doing this, but I guess it made me seem to
stand more or less on the side of the Mitchells as opposed to the Truitts.
Well, when the book came out it quickly became apparent that while the
Mitchells and all their kith and kin had vanished to the four winds, there
were members of the Truitt connection just about everywhere, most of them
female and one hundred percent genealogically minded. They were great
letter writers, too-to me, to my publishers, and elsewhere-and I think I'd
rather have been whacked twenty or thirty times with a green-oak club than10
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Sonovagun Stew: A Folklore Miscellany (Book)
Collection of popular Texas folklore, including cowboy and gaucho songs, information about boat-making and other folk crafts, religious anecdotes, and other miscellaneous stories of early cowboy life in Texas. The index begins on page 165.
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Abernethy, Francis Edward. Sonovagun Stew: A Folklore Miscellany, book, 1985; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc67657/m1/22/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Press.