Word: lanesburg
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...Story* jolts off down the clay ruts of Lane County, Tennessee - stretches of crowded, stumbling action; bursts of mulish power. Abner Teeftallow, a brawny illiterate of 18, leaves the poor-farm where his mother died insane, to labor as a teamster on a traction project of Lanesburg's genius and potentate, Railroad Jones. From his fellow teamsters he learns the technique of hillbilly manhood- gulping moonshine, shooting craps Saturday nights in a wood, toting an automatic pistol for protection on "rambling" (courting) nights and for display at prayer-meetings. He reveres the four local gods- public opinion, money...
...story stumbles and lurches back to Lanesburg. Matured by his flaying at Irontown and believed to be a man of property, Abner becomes involved in the operations of Railroad Jones. The latter, obese, unlettered but wily beyond compare, plays an elusive role, now angel, now devil, but always a hero for the ingenuity of his countless victories at law and his unrivaled wealth. Possessed of an astonishing "rickollection" and pioneer shrewdness, he harps on the folly of tainting man's natural intelligence with education. He has a daughter, Adelaide, highly modernized by upstate schooling, with whom Abner...
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