There is no indication in Flags in the Dust about where the cotton farm on which V. K. Suratt grew up is located, but throughout the Yoknapatawpha fiction he is identified with the Frenchman's Bend area of the county, and cotton would be typically planted in the flatter, richer "bottom" land. The Suratt family worked the land as tenant farmers; as Suratt says, "ever' time we made a furrow, we was scratchin' dirt fer somebody else" (137).
Rodgers tells Bayard and MacCallum that "a man like Debs" would be a better President than Woodrow Wilson (122). A labor organizer, Eugene Debs was the Socialist Party of America's candidate for President in 1904, 1908, 1912 and 1920. In that last election he received over 900,000 votes.
This icon represents the various inhabitants of Yoknapatawpha who are seen in town at various points during the narrative. When Narcissa Benbow, for example, drives her brother in the mid-afternoon from the train station through the Square to the tree-lined street where they live, the narrative describes the scenes from Horace's perspective, returning to Jefferson after being at the war in France.
The only way in which the hardware store figures in this novel is as the place where Virgil Beard has seen the air rifle that he is pushing Byron Snopes to buy for him (108). Although a Jefferson hardware store appears in several other fictions - including The Sound and the Fury and The Mansion - there is no clear connection between any of them and this one.
Given the size of Jefferson, it's likely that the hardware store on the Square is the only hardware store in the town, but like the drugstore its history in the fictions is confusing. In Flags in the Dust it's "Watts' hardware store," according to Virgil Beard, who covets the air rifles for sale there (108). Because Jason Compson is working there on Good Friday, 1928, the hardware story is a major location in The Sound and the Fury, but in that novel it's owned by a man named Earl.
"Hal Wagner" is one of the two characters whom Byron Snopes invents in his attempt to deceive Virgil Beard about the nature of the anonymous letters he is sending Narcissa (109).
"Mister Joe Butler" is one of the two characters whom Byron Snopes invents in his attempt to deceive Virgil Beard about the nature of the anonymous letters he is sending Narcissa (108). He is supposed to live in St. Louis.
Before the Social Security Act of 1935, many localities in the U.S. had 'poor houses' or 'poor farms' to give destitute elderly or handicapped people some place to live (at poor farms they were often required to work for their support). Old Man Falls lives at "the county Poor Farm," which is three miles out of town (3), though the novel does not indicate in which direction. Our decision to locate it south of Jefferson is a conjecture.
"Vardaman" is mentioned twice in the novel, once by Aunt Jenny and once by Deacon Rogers (62, 122. Both of them expressed admiration for his character and politics. Known as "The Great White Chief," James K. Vardaman served one term as Governor of Mississippi (1904-1908) and one term in the United States Senate (1913-1919). A militant segregationist, he vowed to lynch every African American in the state if that was necessary. He opposed U.S. involvement in the First World War, and (as Aunt Jenny notes) argued against using "colored" troops in any way in the Army.
