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Evans and Keeton Squabble « Winslow Indiana and Patoka Township

    No one told a good story like my Pappa John Evans.  Maybe you knew him, most knew him as “Redneck”.  That was way before Redneck had come to mean what it does today, thanks to Jeff Foxworthy.  I would say he earned the nickname due to being a union coal miner or most likely by being a diehard Democrat.   My Pappa, born in 1910, would have been 101 years old this past June if he were still living.  But I met someone in the late 1970s that rivaled him in the art of storytelling and of course, there was a story between the two of them. 

    That someone was Kitty Keeton.  Kitty was the great great uncle to my children through their father’s side.  Kitty was born in 1897 and grew up in the same areas as my grandparents, Muren, Aberdeen, and Turkey Hill.  He was a coal miner and later on in life a barber.  When I first met him I was just a teenager still.  He asked who my family was and he knew them all.  He told me a story about how when he was at the Ayrshire Mines one day a bunch of kids were playing around on the tipple and dropped a chunk of coal that hit him on the head and just about killed him.  If I remember the story correctly it took a chunk of Kitty’s ear off.   One of those kids was my Pappa John.  According to Kitty anyway.

    Not according to my Pappa!!!  I naively told him that I had met someone who knew him.  He said who and I told him Kitty Keeton and that Kitty had told me the story about Pappa dropping the chunk of coal on his head when he was a kid.  In my effort to keep this blog clean, I won’t tell you the exact words my Pappa had to say about this.  But if you knew him, you can only imagine.  It amounted to “That g___ s_____.  He’s still telling that story and it ain’t true.  It wasn’t me.”  He ranted and raved and denied it.  He said Kitty always swore it was him and it wasn’t.  This back and forth went on for years.  Whenever we wanted to hear a good story and get Pappa stirred up we would ask him about it.

Alexander Hamilton

Indiana

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The Federalist Papers

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