My friends - Today's posting is another essay from Professor Gordon Wilson's delightful little book, "Fidelity Folks", published in the middle 1940's, as a remembrance of the place in Calloway County where Professor Wilson was born and raised. We know Fidelity now as New Concord, and it was know in Professor Wilson's early days by that latter name, but he chose to use the former name of Fidelity to title his work. This selection is titled, 'A Village Oracle'. We can only wish that we might have had the opportunity to talk to a JP pioneer settler, as did Professor Wilson. He describes the man in this narrative. As is now customary, there will be no data post tomorrow or on the weekend. Since Thanksgiving is next week, we will observe a holiday recess throughout next week insofar as data posts are concerned. My wife and I will be leaving immediately after Thanksgiving for the JP region for a week's visit, as we continue to inch forward toward our relocation to Calloway County next year. I will be monitoring the List, of course, and, if time permits, I will drop by with a file offering or two before we leave. I will, as usual, have my laptop with me for communication while I am gone. -B ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ A VILLAGE ORACLE -Fidelity Folks -Gordon Wilson Every village has its wise man or oracle. Our wise man in Fidelity was an elderly gentleman, Uncle John Hawkins, who lived to be almost a hundred. He was born some time before the Jackson Purchase was open to settlers and said that as a small boy he had hunted on the prairie where Fidelity was later to grow up. But it was not age that made him an oracle, however much we children loved to hear him tell of an­cient days. He was a rustic philosopher, far ahead of his time. He had picked up a knowledge of law that made him respected by the licensed lawyers of the county seat. For several terms he had served as magistrate and thus acquired the title "Squire." From the earliest days he had been noted for his fairness in settling diffi­cult questions. But there was nothing soft in the old man, even when he was getting old. He kept his fine physique and was able to walk five or six miles a few days before his death; he wanted to go to see one of his children and disdained the use of the family horse and buggy. I have seen him walking down our country road with all the vigor of one of his grandsons. I walked with him sometimes and quizzed him about early days in the Purchase. He loved to tell of his experiences and in no way magnified them. Life throughout his ninety-odd years was a great adventure; he never pined because time passed and youth with it. Besides law, he knew many other things. In our community he lost caste for a while by vot­ing wet when everybody else of any consequence voted dry. He stoutly maintained that a regulated open saloon was to be preferred to the evils of moonshining and boot-legging. You can imagine how bitterly many of the village people opposed this idea, but the worth of the old man soon restored him to his old place in our homes, for the dry forces won by a big majority anyway and could afford to be forgiving. Like Goldsmith's schoolmaster in "The Deserted Village," he loved to argue about politics, or religion, or what have you. I cannot remember what faith he professed; that matters little, for he could argue for or against any position so well that the younger generation were provoked; they could not afford to get angry with him because of his age, but they could not down him in a fair argument, the only kind he ever indulged in. Since he was in early middle age when the Civil War came on, the events of that tragic struggle were as vivid to him as our experiences of the preceding day. Though a Southerner in sympathy, he was never known to say bitter or prejudiced things about the North or the reunited country. Sage experience had taught him that in every war there are good and bad things on each side and that war itself is an unmixed evil. In 1904, when he died, I did him the honor of writing his obituary for the county paper and actually made it a little less stiff than the ones I usually wrote. Forty years later I am glad to add these few words, since our village oracle was typical of the wise men that, almost miraculously, appear in every generation, showing that genius is not a monopoly of any age or race. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++