Submitted by jjoiner@keuka.edu on Mon, 2017-12-11 16:28
Along with other families who founded Jefferson and Yoknapatawpha County, Lonnie Grinnup's family came to the area "through the Cumberland Gap from the Carolinas" (70). This Gap is a narrow pass through the Cumberland Mountains near the intersection of the states of Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee.
Submitted by jjoiner@keuka.edu on Mon, 2017-12-11 16:16
The "Cumberland Gap" plays a major role in the history of the U.S. - and in several of Faulkner's later texts, a significant one in the history of Yoknapatawpha. Historically, the Gap is a narrow pass through the Cumberland Mountains near the intersection of the states of Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee. After the pass was discovered in the mid-18th century and Daniel Boone blazed the 'Wilderness Trail' through it, it became the portal through which the settlers who first inhabited the frontier southwest passed through the Appalachians.
Submitted by jjoiner@keuka.edu on Mon, 2017-12-11 16:15
Along with other families who founded Jefferson and Yoknapatawpha County, Lonnie Grinnup's family came to the area "through the Cumberland Gap from the Carolinas" (70).
Submitted by jjoiner@keuka.edu on Mon, 2017-12-11 15:49
A trot line is a long rope or cord with many separate lines of fishhooks attached to it, used for catching large quantities of fish, primarily catfish. Lonnie Grinnup's trotline "of light cotton rope" runs the width of the river (68) near his hut, and around the house are "short lengths of cord just cut from a spool near by, and a rusted can of full of heavy fishhooks, some of which had already been bent onto the cords" (68) that are ready to be baited and attached to the rope.
Submitted by jjoiner@keuka.edu on Mon, 2017-12-11 15:36
A trot line is a long rope or cord with many separate lines of fishhooks attached to it, used for catching large quantities of fish, primarily catfish. In "Hand upon the Waters" Lonnie Grinnup's trotline "of light cotton rope" runs the width of the river near his hut, and around the house are "short lengths of cord just cut from a spool near by, and a rusted can of full of heavy fishhooks, some of which had already been bent onto the cords" that are ready to be baited and attached to the rope (68). In the story it also becomes one of the oddest burial sites in the fictions.
Submitted by jjoiner@keuka.edu on Mon, 2017-12-11 15:35
Located "in almost the exact center of the thousand and more acres his ancestors once owned" (71), Lonnie Grinnup's hut demonstrates the decay of the lineage of Louis Grenier, a wealthy planter who was one of the three founders of Yoknapatawpha County: Lonnie's home is "a conical hut with a pointed roof, built partly of mildewed canvas and odd-shaped boards and partly of oil tins hammered out flat. A rusted stovepipe projected crazily above it, there was a meager woodpile and an ax, and a bunch of cane poles leaned against it" (67-68).
Submitted by jjoiner@keuka.edu on Mon, 2017-12-11 15:08
This is the path that runs "between the river and the dense wall of cypress and cane and gum and brier" in "Hand upon the Water"; it leads to Lonnie Grinnup's trotline and hut (67).
