There is a real Mount Vernon in northeast Mississippi. Measured from Oxford, the original of Jefferson, it is eighteen miles to the southeast. In Flags in the Dust it is referred to as a "hamlet" "six miles away" from the MacCallum place, where the "young woman" whom Lee MacCallum is courting lives (350-51).
Bayard, Buddy and Richard capture a possum "just behind the spring house" (338). In the era before indoor plumbing, houses were often supplied with water from a nearby spring, and it was not uncommon (though it was a sign of wealth and possession) to erect a small outbuilding over the spring, to keep it from filling with leaves and branches or being used by animals. This building also often served as a primitive kind of refrigerator, a cool place to store perishables.
In Flags in the Dust Bayard Sartoris, Buddy MacCallum and Richard capture a possum "just behind the spring house" (338). In the era before indoor plumbing, houses were often supplied with water from a nearby spring, and it was not uncommon (though it was a sign of wealth and possession) to erect a small outbuilding over the spring, to keep it from filling with leaves and branches or being used by animals. This building also often served as a primitive kind of refrigerator, a cool place to store perishables.
