Harry Caudill and Night Comes to the Cumberlands Revisited Loyal Jones In 1960, Harper's magazine published, with no byline, a blockbuster story entitled "How an Election Was Bought and Sold." In Kentucky, those who knew Harry Caudill were not long in guessing that of all Kentuckians, he was the most likely author. At the same time, Harry and fellow young Turks in the legislature began writing articles and making speeches about the sorry state of affairs in Kentucky public education and politics. Then in July of 1963, Night Comes to the Cumberlands hit the bookstores, and it changed Appalachia, and the way we look at it, forevermore. In the 1960s, Harry Caudill was the only person in the coalfields with the intellect, perseverance, courage, and anger too, to do that book. Harry's mixture of Old Testament and nineteenth-century lawyer's rhetoric and outrage rolled majestically from its pages. One gauge ofthe book's importance was that Alfred H. Perrin, a bookman if there ever was one (then director of publications at Procter and Gamble in Cincinnati ), bought 100 copies and asked the Council of the Southern Mountains to send them to the President, his cabinet, to Appalachian members of Congress and other influential Americans. I was then an employee of the council, and I invited Harry to speak at an annual conference of the CSM, and since we were then running the annual workshop on Urban Adjustment of Southern Appalachian Migrants, we invited him to speak at several of those too. The first time I heard him speak, he stood there The author ofbooks and articles on mountain music, religion, and humor, Loyal Jones has been the director of the Appalachian Center at Berea College since 1970. 42 tall and solemn with a hint of humor around his mouth but with fire and judgment in his eyes. He related the woes of Appalachia in what someone called his "mournful voice," scorching coal operators and public servants alike, and touting his "Southern Mountain Authority" idea. Those used to meeting authors whose spoken words were pallid in comparison to the power of their considered written ones were surprised to hear an author who could marshal extravagant, complex, and effective sentences on the spot, leaving no doubt about his meaning. His love of words was evident, but it took those who did not already know him a while to realize that he was at heart a storyteller, and mountain storytellers are devoted to detail, exaggeration, and endless disgressions to further explain an interesting character of situation. Some were left befuddled after a visit with him. A young David McCullough visited me after a long interview with Harry for an American Heritage article. He looked as anxious as a birddog abandoned on Interstate 75, being an earnest sort. "Is what Harry says the truth?" he asked cautiously. I balked a bit at endorsing all that Harry might have said. I mumbled that there is more than one kind of truth, and then I remembered a story that John Fetterman once told me. John was a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Louisville Courier-Journal. Harry had written the foreword to Fetterman's book Stinking Creek, and they had become good friends. I ran into Harry on the streets ofWhitesburg and after we talked awhile, I asked about Anne. "Why, had you not heard?" Harry said. '"Twas just a fortnight ago, she was seized by a strange malady. She lies up there even now, her frail form racked with fever and pain, gasping for breath." I expressed great concern, but Harry said, "Come and go home with me for lunch." "Why, I can't do that with Anne so sick," I said. Harry responded, "Oh, don't be silly. She's just got a cold." He did take a great delight in straining credulity with his comments on ordinary happenings (like answering the phone with "Well, what an inspired surprise!"), but when he got in full cry about what had happened to his mountains, there was little humor, except a dark and tragic sort, such as, "Reclaiming a strip mine is like putting rouge on a corpse," or "like restoring a rape...