John Prine's John Prine (33 1/3 Series)

Erin Osmon
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 JOHN PRINE
Praise for the series:

It was only a matter of time before a clever publisher realized that there is an audience
for whom Exile on Main Street or Electric Ladyland are as significant and worthy of
study as The Catcher in the Rye or Middlemarch . . . The series . . . is freewheeling and
eclectic, ranging from minute rock-geek analysis to idiosyncratic personal celebration
—The New York Times Book Review

Ideal for the rock geek who thinks liner notes just aren’t enough—Rolling Stone

One of the coolest publishing imprints on the planet—Bookslut

These are for the insane collectors out there who appreciate fantastic design,
well-executed thinking, and things that make your house look cool. Each volume in
this series takes a seminal album and breaks it down in startling minutiae. We love
these. We are huge nerds—Vice

A brilliant series . . . each one a work of real love—NME (UK)

Passionate, obsessive, and smart—Nylon

Religious tracts for the rock ’n’ roll faithful—Boldtype

[A] consistently excellent series—Uncut (UK)

We . . . aren’t naive enough to think that we’re your only source for reading about
music (but if we had our way . . . watch out). For those of you who really like to know
everything there is to know about an album, you’d do well to check out Bloomsbury’s
“33 1/3” series of books—Pitchfork

For reviews of individual titles in the series, please visit our blog at 333sound.com
and our website at http://www.bloomsbury.com/musicandsoundstudies

Follow us on Twitter: @333books

Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/33.3books

For a complete list of books in this series, see the back of this book.

i
 Forthcoming in the series:

Timeless by Martyn Deykers

Tin Drum by Agata Pyzik
Computer World by Steve Tupai Francis
Blackout by Natasha Lasky
Faith by Matthew Horton
Moon Pix by Donna Kozloskie
To Pimp a Butterfly by Sequoia L. Maner
Boxer by Ryan Pinkard
I Want You by Derrais Carter
That’s the Way of the World by Dwight E. Brooks
Fontanelle by Selena Chambers
Come to My Garden by Brittnay L. Proctor
Nightbirds by Craig Seymour
Come Away with ESG by Cheri Percy
Time’s Up by Kimberly Mack

and many more . . .

ii
John Prine

Erin Osmon

iii
 Bloomsbury Publishing Inc
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50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK
29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland
BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks
of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published in the United States of America 2021
Copyright © Erin Osmon, 2021
For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. xv constitute an extension of this
copyright page.
Epigraph by Bob Dylan © BuzzFeed. All rights reserved.
Epigraph by John Prine © 2010 Chicago Tribune. All rights reserved. Distributed by
Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in
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but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Osmon, Erin, author.
Title: John Prine / Erin Osmon.
Description: New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. |
Series: 33 1/3 ; 160 | Includes bibliographical references. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2021022806 (print) | LCCN 2021022807 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781501379239 (paperback) | ISBN 9781501379260 (epub) |
ISBN 9781501379253 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501379246
Subjects: LCSH: Prine, John–Criticism and interpretation. |
Prine, John. John Prine. | Singers–United States.
Classification: LCC ML410.P846 O76 2021 (print) | LCC ML410.P846 (ebook) |
DDC 782.42164092—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021022806
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021022807
ISBN: PB: 978-1-5013-7923-9
ePDF: 978-1-5013-7925-3
eBook: 978-1-5013-7926-0
Series: 33 1/3
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iv
 To my dad, family in Western Kentucky, and the City of
Chicago—the hearts and homes who showed me John Prine.

v
vi
 Contents

Preface xi
Acknowledgments xv
1 Ten Miles West 1
2 Down by the Green River 17
3 We Come for to Sing 25
4 A Winning Hunch 35
5 The Singing Mailman 49
6 And Then He Has You 61
7 The Earl 71
8 The Best Damned Songwriter 83
9 The Bitter End 91
10 Thinking and Feeling 95
11 Midwestern Mindtrips 111
Notes 119
Bibliography 133

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viii
“Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern
mindtrips to the nth degree.”
—Bob Dylan

“Proustian existentialism? I can’t even pronounce that.”

—John Prine

ix
x
 Preface

When John Prine died from complications related to

Covid-19 on April 7, 2020, he took with him a section of
America’s heart. Since his 1971 self-titled debut galvanized
fans, his profound, economical words have become a singular
emblem of Middle America, its families and landscapes, trials
and triumphs, progress and hypocrisy, polished into lyrical
gold with striking poetic clarity. Prine was our chuckling
uncle, our tender best friend, a beacon, a guide, a megaphone.
He was celebrated by the likes of Bob Dylan, but he never
forgot who he was. A son of Chicago. A working-class hero. A
man of people and places overlooked and underestimated.
I was lucky to see Prine perform a handful of times in my
life, but a brief encounter in 2019 remains the most
memorable. I happened upon Prine at an event celebrating
the year’s Grammy Award nominees, when his The Tree of
Forgiveness received three nominations. I’d just recovered
from an ugly cold when, the morning of the soirée, I was
stricken with laryngitis. After weighing the absurdity of
being unable to speak at such a social affair, my fear of
missing out prevailed. The spectacle, and promise of free
food, was too enticing. Plus, I had a great dress. By the time I

xi
 P R E FAC E

arrived, and stepped into the glittering banquet hall, a wave

of hunger hit me like a car-wash sprayer, soaking my being,
leaving me light-headed and wobbly. So I made a beeline for
the raw bar, and heaped one plate with many, many oysters.
As I backed away from the spread, lemon wedges in one
hand, bivalves in the other, I spotted him. Seated in the
middle of the room, as if presiding over his court, was Prine,
in a sharp black suit, his wife Fiona reclining Botticelli-esque
by his side. In some mystical act of mind-melding, Prine and
I locked eyes. It has long been my experience that Midwestern
people find one another in the most far flung places—the
rainforest of Costa Rica, the Louvre, a plane flying from
Taiwan to Thailand—and this psychic connection only
furthered the theory. In that brief instance of me, unable to
speak, and Prine, in a chair six feet away, I mouthed, “You’re
my hero.” He grinned and then mouthed “Thank you,”
nodding at my plate with a swift thumbs-up. If I’d known I’d
never see him again, I might’ve made more of a fuss, with
makeshift hand signals and embarrassing selfie requests. But
somehow, the exchange feels more valuable than any
conversation we might’ve had. My appetite had impressed
him—perhaps the greatest compliment bestowed between
Midwesterners.
As an Indiana native with family spread across Western
Kentucky, and a fifteen-year Chicago resident, I’ve always
understood Prine through the lens of our Middle American
provenance, and admired his singular ability to convey our
commonplace happenings to universal effect. Only Prine
could make a city slicker care for a rural grandma, and turn
pedestrian life in a Chicago suburb into an arresting image.

xii
 P R E FAC E

When Prine sang “Paradise,” a whole world became known

outside of itself. Prine used the Kentucky town’s real-life
events to evoke an abiding sense of bucolic nostalgia, and a
loss of innocence, that appeals to anyone with a modicum of
conscience, crafting one of America’s most enduring protests
in the process. He championed the people and places of
flyover country—a pejorative for Middle American states
that has been subverted as a badge of honor—without a hint
of bitterness. Instead, he left the front door wide open,
inviting listeners to look closer, feel deeper, laugh harder, to
genuinely connect with those who’ve been overlooked and
discarded, to understand them as friends and neighbors, not
the worthless backdrop of the country’s midsection. Prine’s
unfussy acoustic guitar playing fit perfectly within Chicago’s
folk music revival of the 1970s, but his masterly lyrics marked
him a star. His words are so potent, so important to the
artistic legacy of the region that Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker
named Prine the state’s first honorary poet laureate in 2020.
And it all began with John Prine, his extraordinary debut.
Prine wrote from inside a very specific world, defined by
Chicago, its suburbs, and his ancestral roots in Western
Kentucky. The album didn’t break any sales records upon its
release in 1971, but rose to the rank of American icon, like
the man himself, an unassuming titan who touched lives
around the globe. John Prine is a gripping statement on love,
loss, loneliness, and family fleshed out by one of America’s
most prestigious backing bands, The Memphis Boys. “Illegal
Smile,” “Hello in There,” “Sam Stone,” “Paradise,” “Your Flag
Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore,” “Far from Me,”
“Donald and Lydia,” and “Angel from Montgomery” are now

xiii
 P R E FAC E

standards in the American songbook, covered by icons such

as Johnny Cash, Bonnie Raitt, John Denver, Joan Baez,
Dwight Yoakam, and countless others. Beyond his music,
Prine’s greatest legacy is that of an underdog champion, and
the America of his understanding is a better, more vibrant,
and well-respected place because of his generosity and
uncommon gift. Middle America gave to Prine in abundance,
and he reflected those treasures tenfold, with poetic words
and a knowing grin. Prine may be gone, but his influence
lives eternal.

xiv
 Acknowledgments

The following folks were incredibly generous with their time,

memories, and/or resources: Billy Prine, Dave Prine, Ann
Carole Menaloscino Prine, Bob Mehr, Gene Chrisman,
Bobby Wood, Bonnie Koloc, Frank Hamilton, Ray Tate,
Jimmy Tomasello, Chris Farrell, Ed Holstein, Dave Zibell,
Nick Macri, Colby Maddox, Wendy Mayhugh, Mark
Thurman, Greg Kot, Judson Picco, Randy Moore, Ken Shipley,
and Sara Martin and Jenny Lynch with the United States
Postal Service. Thank you. I am grateful for you and your
work.

xv
xvi
 1
Ten Miles West

The Chicago worker’s cottage is a symbol of prosperity. Built

throughout the city and suburbs near the turn of the
twentieth century, these modest homes look like a child drew
the plans: three sides with a triangle on top, a classic idea of a
house manifested in wood and brick. As wealthier residents
rented apartments or hotel rooms downtown, Chicago’s
working class socked away wages for one of these single-
family dwellings, which were affordable, easy to build, and
a symbol of success and security to laborers in an ever-
changing city, pride of ownership tantamount to a gold star,
the passing of one of life’s greatest tests. The characters of
John Prine live in these types of homes, regular working folks
whose everyday pleasure and pain is invisible to the world
outside of themselves, to everyone but John Prine.
He was raised in a 1,500-square-foot worker’s cottage on
First Avenue in suburban Maywood, Illinois, with two
parents, three brothers and, for a time, both of his paternal
grandparents. They were part of a long tradition of families
forming multigenerational households during the Great
Depression, in quarters that bonded them together, creating
a unique language of love, exchange, and understanding,

1
 JOHN PRINE

where Prine’s enduring affection for family was born.

His father, William “Bill” Prine, was a burly man who left his
home in rural Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, with his
parents and sister in 1923, when he was eight years old.
Empson Prine, Bill’s father, was a roving carpenter who
moved his family north to escape Kentucky’s coal mines.
Such migration was common. By 1930, twelve percent of all
people born in Kentucky lived in Illinois, Indiana, or Ohio,
crossing rivers and highways in search of honest work for
honest pay.1
The family landed in suburban Wheaton, Illinois, before
settling in Maywood, about ten miles west of downtown
Chicago as the crow flies. Prine’s grandfather Empson—who
died when Prine was six years old—worked at a rapid clip
among construction booms in downtown and the suburbs.
He built for a Century of Progress, better known as the
Chicago World’s Fair, held in 1933, and constructed the First
National Bank branch at Fourth Avenue and Madison Street
in Maywood, as well as area homes. After graduating from
the public school system in Maywood, Prine’s father Bill
thought he’d join the Navy, but he was flat-footed. So he
signed on with the Civilian Conservation Corps, part of
President Roosevelt’s New Deal. He worked on the shores of
Lake Superior in rural Wisconsin before becoming a tool and
die maker for the Maywood arm of the American Can
Company, which manufactured the first beer can in 1935.
The following year he returned to Muhlenberg County to
marry Verna Hamm, one of four sisters, a daughter of his
beloved ancestral land. Their first son, David (Dave), was
born a year later, in 1937, followed by Douglas (Doug) in

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 T E N M I L E S W E ST

1942, John in 1946, and William (Billy) in 1953, far enough

apart that Verna didn’t have to care for multiple babies at the
same time.
The western suburbs of Chicago are mostly middle-class,
pro-labor enclaves where schools are free from the budget
deficits and ongoing turmoil of the Chicago Public Schools
system, and life intersects at the very livable corner of
walkable and drivable. It’s a sleepier, more easygoing existence
a stone’s throw from one of the nation’s busiest city centers,
one where residents are not exiled but connected to Chicago
by green and blue line city trains, and the suburban Metra
railway. Unlike the North Shore, where affluent suburbanites
flock to flashy homes along Lake Michigan’s coastline, the
western suburbs are filled with everyday laborers and their
cottages, bungalows, and three-flats, who deliver the mail,
assist customers, work the line, build and fix homes, teach
children, cut hair, and drive public transportation.
Maywood borders the more famous suburb of Oak Park,
birthplace of Ernest Hemingway and home of lauded Prairie
School architect Frank Lloyd Wright, whose earliest works
are scattered throughout the polished, tree-lined village. Oak
Park was a dry area and thus antithetical to the workingman’s
wind down that begins with the crack of an Old Style lager.
The difference between it and Maywood back then was like
the difference between regular and extra virgin olive oil: one
had fancier branding, but they served the same function and
were born of the same fruit. Maywood was less chic, more
utilitarian, built along one of the city’s oldest railway lines
with a scrappier spirit and a sturdier backbone. But it wasn’t
without its own unique history. Maywood was settled as

3
 JOHN PRINE

an integrated suburb and safe space for those who’d escaped

slavery in the South. Its Ten Mile Freedom House, situated on
what became Lake Street near the Des Plaines River, was a
stop on the Underground Railroad. The writer Carl Sandburg
composed his iconic ode “Chicago” while living on the north
side of the city, but moved his young family to Maywood
after the poem was published in Poetry magazine in 1914.
The last line of its opening stanza became one of the city’s
most beloved nicknames, a tribute to Chicago’s laborers and
brawny spirit, a celebration of Empson and Bill Prine before
they ever traveled north:
“Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders. . .”
The Berger sisters, Norma and Barbara, stars of the
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, depicted in
Penny Marshall’s 1992 film A League of Their Own, were also
born and raised in Maywood. Fred Hampton, civil rights
activist and chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black
Panther Party, was two years behind Prine at Proviso East
High School. Prine and all three of his brothers graduated
from Proviso East, which sat about two blocks away from the
Prine family home, providing the kids with the increasingly
rare experience of being able to walk to school on their own.
Prine was a quiet kid. “He didn’t have a lot to say,” his
oldest brother Dave remembered. “That’s because he was too
busy observing and recording in his head.” The people and

4
 T E N M I L E S W E ST

places of Maywood and its neighboring suburbs inspired

Prine, many scenes appearing throughout his self-titled
debut. “We spent the whole summer just breaking glass every
possible way we could: slingshots, sitting in trees, dropping
bombs on them, you know?” Prine said of a junkyard near his
childhood home that helped inspire the chorus in “Far From
Me,” where he compares the glint of shattered bottles to the
sparkle of a diamond ring. “That, and there was a suburb next
to us in Maywood: Broadwood, Illinois. When they redid
their sidewalks, something that they put in the concrete
looked like diamonds shining in the sidewalk when the sun
would hit it.”2 The song’s main characters, a couple unraveling
in a storm of deafening silence, were sourced from Prine and
his first high-school girlfriend. The tectonic breakup rattled
his foundation, and the feeling later fueled some of Prine’s
most incisive and devastating lyrics, heard throughout
“Far From Me” (originally titled “The Closing of the Café”).
This is particularly true when he describes the change in the
Cathy character’s laughter—her inattentive delay like a
sledgehammer to the heart.
Prine often approached his songs with the distinct wonder
and glee of a child who’s just been given a lollipop, recasting
boyhood memories with a wisdom that belied his twenty or
so years. But he could just as easily tap into his background to
write stories from outside perspectives, of generations,
genders, and experiences other than his own. His affection
for older people began in his multigenerational household
and with extended kin in Kentucky, but it was strengthened
during a Maywood newspaper route he worked as a boy.
“I delivered to a Baptist old people’s home where we’d have to

5
 JOHN PRINE

go room-to-room,” he said. “And some of the patients would

kind of pretend that you were a grandchild or nephew that
had come to visit, instead of the guy delivering papers. That
always stuck in my head.”3 The memory fueled his meditation
“Hello in There,” originally titled “Old People,” a sagely ode to
America’s aging population left in the shadows of the passing
of time, hidden in homes and by the invisibility of loneliness,
Prine’s voice weary with sorrow over finger-picked acoustic
guitar. He was just twenty-two years old when he wrote of the
alienation of aging, and was able to do so because of his
upbringing among elders who were not cast out but invited
in. In choosing the names for his characters, Prine reached
into that same place of empathy for older generations. “I
wanted to pick a name that could be an old person’s name,
but I didn’t want it to stick out so much,” he said of Loretta,
from “Hello in There.” “People go through phases one year
where a lot of them will name their kids the same, so I was
just thinking that it was very possible that the kind of person
I had in mind could be called Loretta. And it’s not so strange
that it puts her in a complete time period.”4
Prine sings “Hello in there, hello” in the chorus, as if he’s
knocking on a lonely elder’s door, and mentions the strength
of old trees and rivers. Though it makes sense to connect this
to his ancestral lands in the South, it may also be traced to
Maywood. Here, the plodding Des Plaines River runs directly
behind Proviso East High School, near an old-growth forest
whose grounds are also home to a 250-year-old ash tree, the
oldest in northern Illinois. Prine often said that he wrote
around a distinct mood or feeling, using carefully chosen
words to evoke a deep and abiding sense of loneliness,

6
 T E N M I L E S W E ST

nostalgia, hypocrisy, or absurdity. “Hello in There” reveals the

empathy Prine felt for his elders, and the children they lost to
war, but also his sense of province, laces woven between the
city and the country.
Inside the Prine family home, the walls reverberated with
music. Prine’s father Bill loved traditional country, western
swing, and jazz, and collected records by Hank Williams, Roy
Acuff, Louis Armstrong, Ernest Tubb and his Texas
Troubadours, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, and many
others. After clocking out from a shift, he’d return home,
crack open a beer, and turn on the local country music station
WJJD. “It was Webb Pierce, Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell,
and Ray Price back-to-back all night long on the radio,” Prine
said.5 The image of Bill at the kitchen table, a beer in one
hand and a cigar in an ashtray, his radio positioned in the
window for better reception, lingered in the brothers’
memories like a Norman Rockwell painting, a kind of
homespun Americana. It’s no surprise that the radio appeared
in many of Prine’s songs, like “Sam Stone” and “Far From
Me”—period-appropriate, but also a symbol of his father’s
soul.
Bill also brought the boys along to his favorite watering
holes, no-frills dive bars with plenty of country music on the
jukebox. “He used to teach us to order two beers, one to
drink, the other to hit somebody over the head with if the
fight came over your way,” Prine recalled.6 After knocking
back a few, Bill was known to belt out “Wabash Cannonball”
atop a chair, a table, on a train, or any other place he damn
well pleased. Once, at a union event downtown, Bill
disappeared only to resurface on stage with the band, slapping

7
 JOHN PRINE

an upright bass he didn’t know how to play as the group fell

into the song.
Bill was what Southern folks call “a character”—boisterous,
charming, a great storyteller, and showman. But he could also
be measured, holding his emotions close to the vest, a thinker
and skilled negotiator who rose through the local steelworkers’
union to become its president. It was a role he executed with
pride. American Can cut his checks, but he found his people
and purpose at the union. “He really stressed that no matter
who you are, no matter who you work for, you have the right
to be treated fairly,” Billy said. He was a living embodiment of
what local broadcasting personality, folk music fan, and
future Pulitzer Prize-winning author Studs Terkel meant
when he wrote, “Work is about a search for daily meaning
as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for
astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life
rather than a Monday-through-Friday sort of dying.”7 Bill
was also a diehard Roosevelt Democrat, a pariah among
a long line of Republicans who originated with Lincoln
(famously depicted in Prine’s “Grandpa was a Carpenter”).
Outside of his principled union organizing, he raised his
boys with broader progressive values of equality and
working-class rights.
As Bill worked, Verna stayed at home with the boys,
ensuring they were well loved and cared for. They couldn’t
afford the nicest clothes, but Verna prided herself on the
compliments she received about their good looks and
behavior. She was a skilled home cook, whipping up the boys’
favorite meals, like pot roast hash and chili. Verna always
made a separate, smaller pan of the latter for John. “He

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 T E N M I L E S W E ST

wouldn’t touch a bean with a ten-foot pole,” Billy explained.

She was funny, too, an adept storyteller with a dry wit that
spilled out as if by impulse. “Me, my mom, and Doug would
just blurt out whatever we had to say, and say it,” Billy recalled.
“John, Dave, and my dad were more calculated. They would
listen. There might be a conversation going on for five
minutes before they’d say anything.” John also took after Bill
in his plainspokenness, a frank and often humorous style
built on the idea that words should not be wasted. “Quiet
Man,” from John Prine, is a buoyant meditation on this
characteristic. “Strolling down the highway with my shoes in
my hand/I don’t talk much, I’m a quiet man,” Prine sings with
a rhythmic pulse over loping instrumentation.
Bill Prine grew up attending a Methodist church in
Maywood with his parents, while Verna was raised in a
Baptist church in Paradise, Kentucky. Her father, Luther
Hamm, was a part-time preacher and if she didn’t feel like
attending services, she was forced to stay home in bed and
drink castor oil. For that reason, the Prines didn’t force their
children to attend services, but were pleased when they did
go. John’s tenderness for Christian figures—Jesus, God,
heaven, and angels—stemmed from his grandparents and
the unwavering faith of his Kentucky kin, but also his
personal relationship with God, which evolved over time. “I
can’t really sit around and talk with people who believe that
the Bible is the way it happened, because that’s man-made,”
he said. “I’m a writer, too; that’s how I look at the Bible. Like,
‘I could’ve written a better version than that,’ you know? At
least a more interesting one, and then maybe more people
would go to church. I could definitely do a revamp.”8

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 JOHN PRINE

As Bill played country music, young John became

enamored with rock n’ roll. Prine’s parents surprised him
with a blue arch-top guitar one Christmas, an instrument
he’d found in a Sears catalog. Before he learned to play, Prine
posed with it in the mirror, mimicking Elvis Presley and
Duane Eddy, his hair molded with pomade and a pocket
comb. And any time he came by some pocket change, Prine
hit the local hardware store for 45s by Presley, Fats Domino,
Little Richard, and Chuck Berry, the latter a lyrical inspiration.
“Of all the rock n’ roll guys, his lyrics were the most like
Dylan or Kristofferson, he told a story in three minutes and
what got me was he had a syllable for every beat,” Prine
explained.9 Though John Prine drew numerous comparisons
to Dylan, the rhythmic precision of its lyrics suggest a
studious attention to writers like Berry and Roger Miller,
sonically disparate but skilled at the kind of compact,
pulsating story-songs that would become Prine’s signature.
The link between “Johnny B. Goode” and “Spanish Pipedream”
isn’t terribly obvious, but it also isn’t too far-fetched.
Throughout the 1960s, as the so-called beatniks and, later
on, hippies established counter-cultural movements on the
coasts, Prine leaned into the rough-and-ready posturing of
1950s greasers, a streetwise, blue-collar form of rebellion. He
and his buddies hung out in Maywood Park, playing poker,
breaking glass, and chasing girls. They formed a little gang
they called The Parts Brothers, to rival The Jets, the Melrose
Park gang headed by a weaselly kid dubbed Herbie the Rat.
“They weren’t looking for trouble but they could stand their
ground,” Billy recalled. When they weren’t in the park, Prine
and company gathered around the tables at the local pool

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 T E N M I L E S W E ST

hall, and he became a skilled player, often hustling other kids

for money. One time, when his oldest brother came home
from college, he noticed his coin collection was missing.
“John eventually confessed,” Dave said. His little brother had
used it to pay off a pool hall debt.
To complete his image, on the morning of his fourteenth
birthday Prine woke up early and tore across the street to a
gas station to buy a pack of smokes. Billy figured he’d bust
John on this one, and rushed to tattle. But John came from a
long line of tobacco enthusiasts and had struck a deal with
his father: He would wait until he turned fourteen, and clean
out his ashtrays. “I came back across the street, went upstairs
to the bathroom, and stood in front of the mirror smoking
cigarettes, trying to look cool,” Prine said. “Me and cigarettes,
we had a romance.”10
In school, Prine struggled. His mind drifted to blank
spaces of imagination that he filled with daydreams and
after-school plans, peering out the window in math class and
spacing out during science lessons. But he uncovered an
innate talent for gymnastics, following in the footsteps of his
brother Doug, who’d also been on the Proviso East team. And
he found creative respite in language arts, where he applied
his gift for imagining the thoughts of everyday people. “In
school, the only thing I used to be able to do at all was when
they gave me a free hand at writing dialogue,” he said.
“Everybody else, all these kids who were straight-A students,
would just bang their heads against the wall, and I’d just go,
whoosh, and hand it in.”11 Prine was also enamored with
the books of John Steinbeck, inspired by the depth of his
characters and descriptions of landscapes. The connection

11
 JOHN PRINE

between the roving laborers of Of Mice and Men and Prine’s

grandfather Empson is plain, and the tragedy of Steinbeck’s
workingman tales appeared throughout John Prine. Sam
Stone and the dispirited characters of The Grapes of Wrath
are fingers of the same glove, though Prine never read the
book. “I read just about everything except The Grapes of
Wrath because I liked the movie so much I didn’t think the
book could be better than the movie,” he said.12
After graduating from college, Dave Prine returned to
Maywood and immersed himself in the folk music revival
happening in and around Chicago. He enrolled in guitar
lessons at the Old Town School of Folk Music in the early
’60s, and picked it up quickly before moving on to banjo.
Soon, Dave could play guitar, banjo, fiddle, and mandolin. He
turned his younger brother John on to folk music via records
by the Carter Family and the New Lost City Ramblers, and
took him to his first folk music festival, hosted by the
University of Chicago. “You got to see Doc Watson, a couple
of bluegrass bands, and some really good stuff,” Prine
remembered.13 Doug, the second-oldest Prine son, didn’t
have the natural playing ability that Dave and John and Billy
did, but he was a great dancer, loved music, and took his kid
brothers to era-defining concerts. Billy recalled Doug buying
Rolling Stones tickets for his twelfth birthday. And he took
John to see Ray Charles, touring in support of his 1962 album
Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, performing
with a singular gusto that left a lasting impression, fusing
country and folk with rock n’ roll swagger and cosmopolitan
sophistication. “It was fantastic. What a showman,” Prine
recalled.14

12
 T E N M I L E S W E ST

When John was fourteen years old, Dave taught him a

few guitar chords and they began to perform folk and
country songs by the Carter Family, Hank Williams, Ernest
Tubb, and others to a living room audience. The New Lost
City Ramblers’ “Didn’t He Ramble” was a particular favorite.
“It had really silly verses and was a big hit—that was one of
our hot numbers,” Dave recalled. He and his wife lived next
door to the family home on First Avenue, and Dave, nine
years John’s senior, became a de facto father figure to the
young greaser. “He was hanging out with a few not great
guys there for a while in high school,” Dave remembered. He
figured music would give John something more constructive
than shooting pool and carousing. And so folk music became
a unifier among the brothers, which pleased their dad,
particularly when they played his favorite Hank Williams
tunes.
Folk music, and the simplistic musical structures of Hank
Williams and Ernest Tubb, proved easy access points for
Prine’s skill level, less intimidating than the fast-paced, full-
band sounds of his rock n’ roll records. After learning a few
chords, Prine took his first stab at songwriting, which resulted
in an unknowing rip-off of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,”
revealed when his mother began to sing along. After that,
channeling the sorrow of Hank Williams, and his comedic
muse Roger Miller, Prine wrote “The Frying Pan” and “Sour
Grapes.” The former, like many of Prine’s early songs,
embodied country music’s “three chords and the truth”
maxim, while the latter added a fourth, minor chord for an
air of melancholy. Their witty, mature insights about
relationships belied the fact that Prine had barely been in

13
 JOHN PRINE

one. And each song foretold his unique ability to write from
outside perspectives with compassion and authenticity. “I
wanted to get down to earth and just relate like one-to-one,”
he said.15
In September of 1963, Prine started dating Ann Carole
Menaloscino, a Melrose Park native from a tight Italian
family who also attended Proviso East. Just five feet tall
with thick, black hair, Menaloscino was drawn to Prine’s
sharp sense of humor and big heart. “When I was a freshman
learning to play baseball, I saw this cute guy walking around,”
she said. “This person I met two years later was that guy,
John Prine.” At a dance at a neighboring Catholic school, he
confessed his feelings, after downing a few nips of liquid
courage. “You’re more beautiful than Elizabeth Taylor,”
Menaloscino recalled him saying, as she danced and he tried
to keep up. And they clicked almost instantly. “Once I came
along, it was just the two of us. We spent a lot of time together,”
she said.
To try to impress her, Prine made a recording of his songs.
Menaloscino’s father was a school janitor and an electronics
enthusiast who’d repaired a broken reel-to-reel cassette
recorder salvaged from a classroom. It was a rare and
expensive commodity back then, and he allowed Prine to use
it to record a gift for Menaloscino, working in her family’s
unfinished basement. The tape, consisting of a cover of The
Beatles’ “Twist and Shout,” as well as “The Frying Pan” and
“Sour Grapes,” marked Prine’s earliest recording. It resurfaced
years later, after he and Menaloscino were married, and
inspired Prine to add the early originals to his second album
Diamonds in the Rough.

14
 T E N M I L E S W E ST

Between working odd jobs for pocket change, chasing

girls, hanging out with his buddies, and jamming with his
brothers, it took Prine nearly five years to finish high
school. “Gymnastics, that’s what kept him in school really,”
Menaloscino recalled. “He was phenomenal. His form and
poses were beautiful.” When Prine finally did graduate, one
frozen day in January, he was met with little fanfare. “The
custodian was there and he said ‘Hey, you got your diploma?’ ”
Prine recalled. “And that was my ceremony.”16 With no plans
for college, Prine followed Dave’s advice and put his name in
for a job at the post office. “It was perfect for him,” Dave said.
“He could spend a whole lot of time thinking and singing to
himself and inventing while he’s just walking around out
there.”

15
16
 2
Down by the Green River

Where you’re from and where you grew up are often separate
places. For the Prines of Maywood, Western Kentucky was
home, and Bill made sure the kids knew it. “In second or
third grade we were supposed to go home and ask our parents
where we were from, what our heritage was. The kind of
thing where kids in class would stand up and say they were
Irish-German or Scandinavian or whatever,” Prine said. “My
dad, after he had a couple beers, said, ‘Remember, son: you’re
pure Kentuckian, the last of a dyin’ breed.’ ”1
The Green River is a tributary of the Ohio River that was
once a busy artery for rural coal shipped to urban areas, a
symbol of deliverance that’s also an emblem of home. On its
banks sat Paradise, an old-fashioned, picturesque town once
home to both sides of John Prine’s family. In Paradise, the
river was a source of food and freedom, an arcadian
playground where Prine’s grandfather Luther Hamm and his
friend Bubby Short netted catfish, and where Prine’s boyhood
adventures began. A giant rope swing flew the bravest of kids
halfway out over the water, where they could drop off and
then swim, a reprieve on a hot summer day. Throughout the
summer and over Labor Day weekends, the Prines packed

17
 JOHN PRINE

into the family vehicle and drove seven hours south from
Maywood to Muhlenberg County for a homecoming in their
ancestral land, filled with Smiths, Hamms, and Prines, who
were related by blood, by marriage, or by the implicit code
that friends are tantamount to kin. The area was so small that
everyone knew each other, nobody locked their doors, and
kids were free to adventure in bare feet, capping their
explorations with a five-cent ice cream at the general store,
safe and secure under the loving, watchful eye of the town.
His cousins shot BB guns and wore floral dresses fashioned
from old flour sacks. Great aunts and uncles and other
extended kin raised their own hogs and vegetables. Preserving
peaches, pears, green beans, beets, tomatoes, and other produce
for winter—a particular art known as canning—was an act
born of survival, not of artisanal fancy. Farm-to-table dining
was de facto, and nothing was wasted or taken for granted. The
area wasn’t wired to the power grid until the late ’50s, and
outhouses were commonplace. “Every one I ever went in had
spider webs or a wasp nest, and I had ornery cousins who’d
throw rocks at them while I was in there,” Dave remembered.
These families, some of whom dated to Daniel Boone’s trail-
building in 1775, formed a long tradition of pioneering and
self-sufficient soldiers, farmers, miners, and shopkeepers who
married and sired a vast familial network of homemakers and
laborers who remained in Muhlenberg County, or traveled
elsewhere to work with their hands, organizing unions and
crafting some of America’s most vital goods.
Music was a tradition in the Kentucky family. After a
hearty lunch, reunions were capped with hours of picking
and singing traditional gospel and country tunes, generations

18
 D OW N B Y T H E G R E E N R I V E R

with their guitars, fiddles, and mandolins. The ritual left a

lasting impression on Prine, even if his city life didn’t
perfectly align with these folks’ rural faith. The magnitude of
his extended family’s old-time religion was mighty. Their
belief was unwavering and his affection for these gatherings
and their guideposts became a particular faith in itself.
Family is why he loved Christmas. Over the years, he
developed a relationship with a God of his understanding,
where angels guide and protect, Jesus is a friend, and heaven
is a place where families see one another again. Once Prine
was established, he too would bring his guitar and perform
for the family, the revelry sometimes extending until eight or
nine o’clock in the evening. The elder Hamms and Smiths
shared their memories of performances by fellow Muhlenberg
County native Ike Everly, The Everly Brothers’ patriarch.
Prine’s grandfather Luther Hamm even joined him from
time to time, on guitar and fiddle, and also played on a local
radio station. Prine took after his father in personality, but his
natural talent came down through his mother’s side.
Paradise was the closest town to the Smith and Hamm
farms that dotted the rolling hills of the county, and its rustic
streets also featured modest homes where they lived. Verna
Prine was educated in a one-room schoolhouse in town. Her
father Luther was a part-time preacher who also ran the ferry
crossing at Paradise, which had two general stores, one post
office, one baptist church, and zero traffic lights. It was a small
town frozen in time, cared for by an aging population and
their relatives, like the Prines, who sojourned for holidays
and family reunions. “I go back to other places and a lot of
them don’t look how I remembered them to be,” Prine said.

19
 JOHN PRINE

“That’s why I always got a kick out of Paradise. It was always,

as soon as I got there, it was just like I remembered it.”2
Prine often likened it to something from Walt Disney,
meaning that it was old-timey and folksy. It was untouched
by industrialization. That is, until it was.
In 1963 the Tennessee Valley Authority commissioned a
new power plant, after building two of the world’s largest
coal-burning units on the banks of the Green River in
Paradise. The move brought much-needed jobs to the area.
But it also created unprecedented mining of the coal that
lined its land. TVA contracted numerous companies to begin
strip-mining Paradise, removing immense swaths of surface
soil and rock with heavy machinery to excavate the coal,
as opposed to tunneling to it. Most famously, TVA enlisted
the Peabody Coal Company, whose so-called Big Hog
shovel, a Bucyrus-Erie 3850, was the world’s largest, with
a bucket size of more than 100 cubic yards. It could pick up
300 tons of dirt and rock in one swoop, and drop it 450 feet
away. The Big Hog was efficient but wreaked unmitigated
havoc on Paradise’s landscape, digging out its hills and
replacing them with pits and piles. The water TVA used to
cool its turbines ran straight into the river, too, killing its fish
and creating a harrowing scene. TVA eventually bought up
all the land and quite literally tore down Paradise, leaving a
metaphor almost too perfect, a devastation too visceral. Prine
often joked that the farmers and townspeople who sold their
property did so knowing that underneath it was nothing but
unusable, sulfur-filled coal. But it was TVA who got the last
laugh, leaving the area all but unrecognizable to those who
knew and loved it.

20
 D OW N B Y T H E G R E E N R I V E R

But the Prines created enduring memories in Paradise

before it was dug up and destroyed. And John memorialized
them in a song he wrote for his father, who loved the place
like family and mourned its passing as if it were kin. What
many don’t realize is that Prine’s “Paradise” is not a metaphor
but a true, detailed retelling of his childhood and the events
that took down the town. Its chorus is so poetic and
devastating, so relatable to the many areas of Middle America
that have been shattered by the rise and fall of industrialization,
that it’s become a standard. Johnny Cash, The Everly Brothers,
John Fogerty, John Denver, Dwight Yoakam, Roger Waters,
and legions more have all covered the tune. And bluegrass
pickers and local folkies have too, often changing its location
to suit their particular grief. When Prine met Bill Monroe
in the ’70s, the bluegrass figurehead praised the song’s
timelessness. “Bill said, ‘Oh, yeah, I thought that was a song
I overlooked from the ’20s,’ ” Prine recalled. “What a
compliment.”3
Billy recalled one trip to Paradise where he, John, their
father Bill, and a great-uncle set out by boat to explore Airdrie,
the site of a former iron works, about a mile downstream
from Paradise. Airdrie was like something out of a Hardy
Boys mystery. The hulking walls of the failed foundry,
rumored to have been used as a prison during the Civil War,
and a large brick chimney protruded from long-forgotten
forest like hovering spectres. Airdrie Hill, reached by scaling
60 or so moss-covered steps, was home to a long-demolished
town, where a mansion and beautiful park once sat. Prine’s
mother Verna always said it was haunted. “Aunt Margaret,
before we left, said, ‘You don’t hear snakes. But if you smell

21
 JOHN PRINE

cucumbers that means there’s water moccasins or

cottonmouths,’ ” Billy recalled. “So we’re walking up these
steps, they’re all overgrown, and everything started to smell
like cucumbers.”4 Prine remembered the smell as cantaloupe,
not cucumbers, but recalled the same fear as they arrived on
the banks of Airdrie after floating downriver. “Just about
everything started to smell like cantaloupe, and that really
scared us,” he said.5 Bill carried a rifle, John carried a pistol,
and young Billy carried a BB gun, protection in case they
crossed any belligerent reptiles. The brothers didn’t find any
snakes, but made sure to shoot any old bottle they saw. “John
took the gun and put it on his forearm—he’d seen Dodge
City [Gunsmoke] too many times on TV—and he got a
powder burn,” Billy remembered.6 John later recounted the
adventure in the second verse of “Paradise,” crystalizing a
moment in time.
Muhlenberg County native Merle Travis may have been
the first local to sing of the drudgery of coal mining, his 1946
song “Dark as a Dungeon” a sympathetic workingman’s
anthem. But “Paradise” was the area’s first explicit protest, a
salient cautionary tale. As recently as 2015, environmental
activists quoted “Paradise” in a federal lawsuit against the
Peabody Energy Corp., its chorus long a thorn in the energy
concern’s side. In 1973, two years after the release of John
Prine, Peabody even issued a pamphlet titled “Facts vs. John
Prine.” “We probably helped supply the energy to make that
recording that falsely names us as ‘hauling away’ Paradise,
Kentucky,” it stated.7
After Prine wrote “Paradise,” he returned home to play it
for Bill, a larger-than-life man who could also be

22
 D OW N B Y T H E G R E E N R I V E R

undemonstrative. Though he was proud of his son, the

budding songwriter, he often preferred that he, Dave, and
Billy perform his favorite country songs rather than John’s
originals. “He’d go, ‘Yeah, I like that, John, but play that Hank
Williams song again,’ ” Billy said. But when John debuted
“Paradise,” explaining he’d written it for Bill, his reaction was
different, and entirely out of character. “My father just had
this look on his face like he could have died,” Billy recalled.
“He said it was one of the most beautiful songs he’d ever
heard.” From then on, “Paradise” was known among the
Prines as “Bill’s song,” “Dad’s song,” or “your song,” a moving
throughline from father to son, from the county to the rest of
the world.
Twenty-three years after it upended Paradise, Peabody’s
Big Hog shovel dug its own grave, after the company had
destroyed nearly 50,000 acres of land. In April of 1986, the
Peabody corporation buried the Big Hog in a massive pit,
in the Sinclair strip mine in Paradise. According to the
Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, “. . . most of this
property has been altered by surface mining to a degree that
makes restoration to its original habitat impractical.”8 But
since the 1980s the Kentucky Department of Fish and
Wildlife Resources has worked to create a sprawling
conservation area. Its many ponds and lakes are home to
copperbelly water snakes and more than ninety species of
birds. It is a paradise made from a Paradise lost, not the place
of Prine’s remembrance, but a beloved byproduct of his
enduring protest.

23
24
 3
We Come for to Sing

In Inside Llewyn Davis, the curmudgeonly namesake of Joel

and Ethan Coen’s 2013 film walks into an empty club after a
tiresome cross-country journey, guitar in hand and patience
waning. He’s there to audition for Bud Grossman, a formidable
man with outsized influence in the folk music scene as owner
of Chicago’s biggest nightclub, The Gate of Horn. It’s named
for a passage in Homer’s Odyssey, in which the mythical Gate
of Horn grants crossing to true dreams exclusively, those of an
uncorrupted, honest heart, a metaphor that underscores the
earnestness of folk music and the Coen brothers’ love of Greek
mythology. But it also signals a turn in the folk music scene
during the 1960s. After Llewyn Davis performs one song,
Grossman meets him with ear-splitting silence. “I don’t see a
lot of money here,” he finally says, banishing Davis’ dream to
the realm of the unfulfilled, and highlighting the hypocrisy of
a capitalist venture cloaked in puritanical imagery.
Bud Grossman, a tidy bald man in a goatee and turtleneck,
is the fictionalized version of Albert Grossman, a pudgy,
tousled man with a fountain of grey hair, who co-founded the
real Gate of Horn in March of 1956. The 100-seat club in the
basement of the old Rice Hotel, at the corner of Dearborn

25
 JOHN PRINE

Street and Chicago Avenue, was one of the first folk music
clubs in America and instantly became the heart of the city’s
scene, providing an anchor for locals Bob Gibson, Ginni
Clemmens, and Roger McGuinn, and a guaranteed full house
for touring musicians Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Odetta, and
more. Grossman, a hustler by nature, conceived of the idea
after seeing Gibson perform at a downtown supper club,
captivating audiences with his banjo and twelve-string guitar.
Grossman was impressed with Gibson, who was at the forefront
of the commercialization of folk music—well educated, well
showered, and well dressed. But Grossman was also dialed in to
the momentum of the folk music revival in New York City’s
Greenwich Village and accurately predicted that, like with
most things, it would soon make its way to Chicago, where the
city could add its own twist. In 1961, Gibson released his
seminal album Gibson & Camp at the Gate of Horn, cementing
the club and Chicago as an important hub of the revival.
Grossman parted ways with the club the same year, to engineer
the folk ensemble Peter, Paul and Mary and become Bob
Dylan’s manager, taking an unprecedented twenty-five percent
cut for the bloodthirsty maneuvering that made him one of the
most controversial men in the music industry.
But before Grossman almost single-handedly transformed
folk music from an activist’s platform and a niche circuit to
big business with massive payouts, he made Chicago one of
the hottest spots for its artists, spurring an entire local
network of support and inspiring a fleet of like-minded
clubs. Other downtown nightclubs like the Fickle Pickle and
Mother Blues began hosting folk music. Terkel interviewed
many of its musicians on his radio show, The Studs Terkel

26
 W E C OM E F O R T O SI N G

Wax Museum on 98.7 WFMT, most famously a 1963

broadcast with an up-and-coming folkie who was about to
release his second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. WFMT
began broadcasting The Midnight Special a decade prior,
named after the popular folk song and dedicated to “folk
music & farce, show tunes & satire, madness & escape,” which
evolved into a platform for established and up-and-coming
folk singers, and the go-to for local listeners amid the boom
of America’s folk music revival. It was a favorite of John Prine,
who’d tune in on the family radio on Saturday nights, eager to
hear what hosts Norman Pellegrini and Ray Nordstrand had
in store, which great new folk singers might perform live or
via recording. It was where Prine first heard his future best
friend and champion, Steve Goodman, whose melancholic
train song “City of New Orleans” captivated listeners in the
early ’70s.
Folk music in Chicago originated with the city’s Irish,
Polish, Romanian, and other immigrant communities, its
blues and gospel traditions born of the Great Migration,
labor union songbooks, and hillbilly music broadcast on
National Barn Dance from the studios of local radio station
WLS. A catch-all term for the historical songs of everyday
working people, folk music is a broad umbrella, encompassing
a wide swath of tradition. Louis Armstrong may have put it
best when he said, “All music is folk music; I ain’t never heard
no horse sing a song.”1
From the turn of the twentieth century, as the city rebuilt
itself out of the ashes of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, all
manner of traditional songs were revived, reinterpreted,
recorded, pressed, printed, published, broadcast, and

27
 JOHN PRINE

performed throughout the city, codifying its abundance of

diverse and vital voices and traditions living under one
sprawling Midwestern roof. Chicago has always been a city
of neighborhoods, each representative of a particular race,
ethnicity, industry, or ethos, disparate patches stitched to
form a rough-hewn technicolor quilt born of everyday
people, the promise of the American Dream on the banks of
Lake Michigan. Folk music soundtracked each area with a
specific flair. It also provided grist for the mill of the emerging
Chicago music industry, those earliest recording studios,
sheet music printers, and publishing impresarios, the
hardworking hustlers, like Grossman, who’ve helped define
the city’s resilience and innovative spirit, operating at the
precipice between now and future, outside of the major label
music industrial complex.
Mark Twain wrote in 1883,“It is hopeless for the occasional
visitor to try to keep up with Chicago—she outgrows his
prophecies faster than he can make them. She is always a
novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when you
passed through the last time.”2 Indeed, Chicago’s folk music
revival evolved quickly. Ignited by Pete Seeger-affiliated
groups like The Weavers and the Almanac Singers, as well as
People’s Songs, an organization dedicated to reviving,
performing, and distributing America’s labor music and
traditional folk songs of Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta,
the Dust Bowl, and elsewhere, soon folk songs were being
performed by a spectrum of locals, professional and amateur.
They were energized by the prospect of learning about and
participating in musical tradition through a simple,
approachable, story-centric form. Like New York, San

28
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 The British Minister closes his communication to Lord
Pauncefote as follows: "I request that your excellency will
explain to the Secretary of State the reasons, as set forth in
this dispatch, why His Majesty's government feel unable to
accept the convention in the shape presented to them by the
American Ambassador, and why they prefer, as matters stand at
present, to retain unmodified the provisions of the
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. His Majesty's government have
throughout these negotiations given evidence of their earnest
desire to meet the views of the United States.
{71}
They would on this occasion have been ready to consider in a
friendly spirit any amendments of the convention not
inconsistent with the principles accepted by both governments
which the government of the United States might have desired
to propose, and they would sincerely regret a failure to come
to an amicable understanding in regard to this important
subject."

CANAL, The Kaiser Wilhelm Ship.

See (in this volume)

GERMANY: A. D. 1895 (JUNE).

CANAL, Manchester Ship.

On the 1st of January, 1894, the ship canal from Liverpool to

Manchester, which had been ten years in course of construction
and cost £15,000,000, was formally opened, by a long
procession of steamers, which traversed it in four and a half
hours.

CANAL: The Rhine-Elbe, the Dortmund-Rhine,

and other Prussian projects.

See (in this volume)

GERMANY: A. D. 1890 (AUGUST);
 and 1901 (JANUARY).

CANDIA: A. D. 1898 (September).

Fresh outbreak.

See (in this volume)

TURKEY: A. D. 1897-1899.

CANEA: Christian and Moslem conflicts at.

See (in this volume)

TURKEY: A. D. 1897 (FEBRUARY-MARCH).

CANOVAS DEL CASTILLO, Antonio:

Formation of Spanish Cabinet.

See (in this volume)

SPAIN: A. D. 1895-1896.

CANOVAS DEL CASTILLO, Antonio:

Assassination.

See (in this volume)

SPAIN: A. D. 1897 (AUGUST-OCTOBER).

CANTEEN, The Army.

See (in this volume)

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1900 (MAY-NOVEMBER), THE PROHIBITION PARTY;
and 1901 (FEBRUARY).

CANTON: A. D. 1894.
The Bubonic Plague.

See (in this volume)

PLAGUE.
CANTON: A. D. 1899.
Increasing piracy in the river.

See (in this volume)

CHINA: A. D. 1899.

CAPE COLONY.

See (in this volume)

SOUTH AFRICA (CAPE COLONY).

CAPE NOME, Gold discovery at.

See (in this volume)

ALASKA: A. D. 1898-1899.

CAPE SAN JUAN, Engagement at.

See (in this volume)

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1898 (JULY-AUGUST: PORTO RICO).

CARNEGIE, Andrew: Gifts and offers to public libraries.

See (in this volume)

LIBRARIES;
and LIBRARY, NEW YORK PUBLIC.

CARNEGIE COMPANY, Sale of the interests of the.

See (in this volume)

TRUSTS: UNITED STATES.

CAROLINE and MARIANNE ISLANDS:

Their sale by Spain to Germany.
 By a treaty concluded in February, 1899, the Caroline Islands,
the Western Carolines or Pelew Islands, and the Marianne or
Ladrone Islands (excepting Guam), were sold by Spain to
Germany for 25,000,000 pesetas—the peseta being equivalent to
a fraction less than twenty cents. Spain reserved the right to
establish and maintain naval and mercantile stations in the
islands, and to retain them in case of war. Spanish trade and
privileges for the Spanish religious orders are guaranteed
against interference.

CARROLL, Henry K.:

Report on Porto Rico.

See (in this volume)

PORTO RICO: A. D. 1898-1899 (AUGUST-JULY).

CASSATION, The Court of.

The French Court of Appeals.

See (in this volume)

FRANCE: A. D. 1897-1899.

CASTILLO, Pedro Lopez de:

Letter to the soldiers of the American army.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1898 (AUGUST 21).

CATALOGUE, International, of Scientific Literature.

See (in this volume)

SCIENCE, RECENT: SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

CATALONIA: Independent aspirations in.

See (in this volume)

SPAIN: A. D. 1900 (OCTOBER-NOVEMBER).
CATASTROPHES, Natural: A. D. 1894.

Late in December, the orange groves of Florida were mostly

destroyed or seriously injured by the severest frost known in
more than half a century.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1896.

On January 8, a severe earthquake shock was felt at Meshed,

Kelat and other Persian towns, causing over 1,100 deaths.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1896.

In March, the Tigris overflowed its banks, causing

incalculable loss of life and property in Mesopotamia.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1896.

A succession of earthquake shocks in March, 1896, did great

damage at Santiago, Valparaiso, and other parts of Chile.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1896.

On May 15, a cyclone destroyed part of the town of Sherman, in

Texas, killing more than 120 persons, mostly negroes. The same
day a waterspout burst over the town of Howe in the same state,
killing 8 people.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1896.

On May 27, a fierce cyclone swept the city of St. Louis,

Missouri, completely devastating a large part of the city, and
causing great loss of life and property.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1896.

A destructive wave swept the Japanese coast in June.

 See (in this volume)
JAPAN: A. D. 1896.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1896.

On July 26, a tidal wave, 5 miles in width, inundated the

coast of Kiangsu, in China, destroying many villages and more
than 4,000 inhabitants.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1896-1897.

A severe famine prevailed in India from the spring of 1896

until the autumn of 1897.

See (in this volume)

INDIA: A. D. 1896-1897.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1897.

A severe earthquake occurred at the island of Kishm in the

Persian Gulf, in January, causing great loss of life.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1897.

In March and April of this year the floods along the

Mississippi river and its tributaries reached the highest
level ever recorded. In extent of area and loss of property
these floods were the most remarkable in the history of the
continent. The total area under water on April 10 was about
15,800 square miles, containing about 39,500 farms, whose
value was close upon $65,000,000. The loss of life was small.
Congress gave relief to the extent of $200,000, besides
appropriating $2,583,300 for the improvement of the
Mississippi.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1897.

 Extensive floods occurred in Galatz, Moldavia, in June,
rendering 20,000 people homeless.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1897.

The islands of Leyte and Samar, in the Visayas group, were

swept by an immense wave caused by a cyclone, in October,
thousands of natives being killed, and much property
destroyed.

{72}

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1897.

On October 6, the Philippine Islands were swept by a typhoon,

which destroyed several towns. The loss of life was estimated
at 6,000, of whom 400 were Europeans. This was followed on
October 12 by a cyclone which destroyed several villages and
caused further loss of life.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1897.

By an eruption of the Mayon volcano in the island of Luzon,

Philippine Islands, four hundred persons were buried in the
lava, and the large town of Libog completely destroyed.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1898.

A series of earthquake shocks in Asia Minor during the month

of January occasioned considerable loss of life and property.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1898.

In January, Amboyna, in the Molucca Islands, was almost

destroyed by an earthquake, in which about 50 persons were
killed and 200 injured.
CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1898.

On January 11, a tornado wrecked many buildings in Fort Smith,

Ark. The loss of life was reported as 50, with hundreds
injured.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1898.

A disastrous blizzard occurred in New England, January 31 and

February 1. Fifty lives were reported as lost, and the damage
in Boston alone amounted to $2,000,000. Many vessels were
driven ashore or foundered, with further loss of life.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1898.

Floods on the Ohio river in March and April caused much loss
of life and property. Shawneetown, Illinois on the Ohio river,
was almost entirely destroyed by the flood, more than 60 lives
being lost.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1898.

On the night of September 10, the island of Barbados was swept

by a tornado which destroyed 10,000 houses and damaged 5,000
more. Three-fourths of the inhabitants were left homeless, and
about 100 were killed. The islands of St. Vincent and St.
Lucia also suffered great losses of life and property.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1898.

A typhoon swept the central provinces of Japan in September,

causing heavy floods, and destroying 100 lives.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1899.

Severe floods on the Brazos river, in Texas, occasioned the

 death of about 100 people, and property losses to the extent
of $15,000,000.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1899.

A destructive tornado in Northern Missouri, in April, did much

damage in the towns of Kirksville and Newtown. Over fifty
persons were killed.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1899.

An almost unprecedented failure of crops in eastern Russia

caused famine, disease and awful destruction of life.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1899.

A terrific hurricane visited the West Indies August 7 and 8.

Of the several islands affected, Porto Rico suffered most,
three-fourths of the population being left homeless. The total
loss of life in the West Indies was estimated at 5,000.

See (in this volume)

PORTO RICO: A. D. 1899 (AUGUST).

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1899.

About 1,500 people lost their lives in an earthquake around

Aidin, Asia Minor, September 2.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1899.

The island of Ceram, in the Moluccas, was visited by an

earthquake and tidal wave, November 2. Many towns were
destroyed, and 5,000 people killed.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1899-1900.

Recurrence of famine in India.
 See (in this volume)
INDIA A. D. 1899-1900.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1900.

The city of Galveston, Texas, was overwhelmed and mostly

destroyed, on the 9th of September, by an unprecedented
hurricane, which drove the waters of the Gulf upon the
low-lying town.

See (in this volume)

GALVESTON.

CATASTROPHES, Natural: 1901.

Famine in China.

See (in this volume)

CHINA: A. D. 1901 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY).

CATHOLICS, Roman:
Protest of British peers against the declaration required from
the sovereign.

See (in this volume)

ENGLAND: A. D. 1901 (FEBRUARY).

CATHOLICS, Roman:
Victory in Belgium.

See (in this volume)

BELGIUM: A. D. 1894-1895.

See, also, PAPACY.

CEBU: The American occupation of the island.

 See (in this volume)
PHILIPPINE ISLANDS: A. D. 1899 (JANUARY-NOVEMBER).

CENSUS: Of the United States, A. D. 1900.

See (in this volume)

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1900 (MAY-OCTOBER).

CENTRAL AFRICA PROTECTORATE, British.

See (in this volume)

BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA PROTECTORATE.

CENTRAL AMERICA, A. D. 1821-1898.

Unsuccessful attempts to unite the republics.

"In 1821, after numerous revolutions, Central America

succeeded in throwing off the yoke of Spain. A Congress
assembled at Guatemala in March, 1822, and founded the
Republic of Central America, composed of Guatemala, Salvador,
Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. The new Republic had but
a short existence; after numerous civil wars the Union was
dissolved, October 26, 1838, and the five States of the
Republic became so many independent countries. Several
attempts toward a reorganization of the Constitution of the
Republic of Central America remained fruitless and had cost
the lives of certain of their authors, when, through the
influence of Dr. P. Bonilla, President of the Republic of
Honduras, a treaty was concluded between Nicaragua and
Salvador, according to which the three Republics constituted a
federation under the name of the Greater Republic of Central
America. The three Republics became States, and the
sovereignty of the federation was exercised by a Diet composed
of three members, one for each State, and which convened every
year in the capital of the Federal States.

"On the invitation of this Diet, the three States appointed a

 delegation which met as a Constituent Assembly at Managua,
Nicaragua, and established a constitution, according to the
terms of which the three States took the name of the United
States of Central America, November 1, 1898. This
Constitution, grand and patriotic, which, in the minds of
those who had elaborated it, meant a complete consolidation of
the three Federal States and a speedy realization of a
reorganization of the Grand Republic of Central America,
dreamed of by Morazan, had a sad ending. The day after the
meeting of the Constituent Assembly a revolutionary movement
hostile to the new federation broke out in Salvador and gave a
new administration to this State. Its first act was to retire
from the Union, and this secession brought about the
dissolution of the United States of Central America; for,
following the example of Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua took
back their absolute sovereignty."

H. Jalhay,
quoted in Bulletin of American Republics, March, 1899.

{73}

The secession of Salvador was brought about by a revolutionary

movement, which overthrew the constitutional government of
President Gutierrez and placed General Tomas Regolado at the
head of a provisional government, which issued the following
manifesto on the 25th of November, 1898: "Considering—That the
compact of Amapala, celebrated in June, 1895, and all that
proceeds therefrom, has not obtained the legitimate sanction
of the Salvadorean people, and, moreover, has been a violation
of the political constitution of Salvador; That in the
assembled Constituent Assembly of Managua, reunited in June of
the present year, the deputies of Salvador were not directly
elected by the Salvadorean people, and for that reason had no
legal authority to concur to a constituent law that could bind
the Republic; That the union with the Republics of Honduras
and Nicaragua under the contracted terms will seriously injure
 the interests of Salvador: Decrees. ART. 1. The Republic of
Salvador is not obliged by the contract of Amapala to
acknowledge any authority in the constitution of Managua of
the 27th August of the current year, and it is released from
the contract of union with the Republics of Honduras and
Nicaragua. ART. 2. The Republic of Salvador assumes in full
its self-government and independence, and will enter the union
with the sister Republics of Central America when same is
convenient to its positive interests and is the express and
free will of the Salvadorean people."

United States, 55th Congress, 3d Session,

Senate Document Number 50.

CENTRAL AMERICA, A. D. 1884-1900.

Interoceanic Canal measures of later years.

See (in this volume)

CANAL, INTEROCEANIC, with accompanying map.

CENTRAL AMERICA, Nicaragua: A. D. 1894-1895.

Insurrection in the Mosquito Indian Strip.
The Bluefields Incident.

In his Annual Message to Congress, December, 1894, President

Cleveland referred as follows to disturbances which had
occurred during the year at Bluefields, the principal town of
the Mosquito district of Nicaragua, and commonly known as "the
Bluefields Incident:" "By the treaty of 1860 between Great
Britain and Nicaragua, the former Government expressly
recognized the sovereignty of the latter over the strip, and a
limited form of self-government was guaranteed to the Mosquito
Indians, to be exercised according to their customs, for
themselves and other dwellers within its limits. The so-called
native government, which grew to be largely made up of aliens,
for many years disputed the sovereignty of Nicaragua over the
strip and claimed the right to maintain therein a practically
independent municipal government. Early in the past year
efforts of Nicaragua to maintain sovereignty over the Mosquito
territory led to serious disturbances, culminating in the
suppression of the native government and the attempted
substitution of an impracticable composite administration in
which Nicaragua and alien residents were to participate.
Failure was followed by an insurrection, which for a time
subverted Nicaraguan rule, expelling her officers and
restoring the old organization. This in turn gave place to the
existing local government established and upheld by Nicaragua.
Although the alien interests arrayed against Nicaragua in
these transactions have been largely American and the commerce
of that region for some time has been and still is chiefly
controlled by our citizens, we can not for that reason
challenge the rightful sovereignty of Nicaragua over this
important part of her domain."

United States, Message and Documents

(Abridgment, 1894-1895).

In his Message of 1895 the President summarized the later

history of the incident as follows: "In last year's message I
narrated at some length the jurisdictional questions then
freshly arisen in the Mosquito Indian Strip of Nicaragua.
Since that time, by the voluntary act of the Mosquito Nation,
the territory reserved to them has been incorporated with
Nicaragua, the Indians formally subjecting themselves to be
governed by the general laws and regulations of the Republic
instead of by their own customs and regulations, and thus
availing themselves of a privilege secured to them by the
treaty between Nicaragua and Great Britain of January 28,
1860. After this extension of uniform Nicaraguan
administration to the Mosquito Strip, the case of the British
vice-consul, Hatch, and of several of his countrymen who had
been summarily expelled from Nicaragua and treated with
considerable indignity, provoked a claim by Great Britain upon
Nicaragua for pecuniary indemnity, which, upon Nicaragua's
 refusal to admit liability, was enforced by Great Britain.
While the sovereignty and jurisdiction of Nicaragua was in no
way questioned by Great Britain, the former's arbitrary
conduct in regard to British subjects furnished the ground for
this proceeding. A British naval force occupied without
resistance the Pacific seaport of Corinto, but was soon after
withdrawn upon the promise that the sum demanded would be
paid. Throughout this incident the kindly offices of the
United States were invoked and were employed in favor of as
peaceful a settlement and as much consideration and indulgence
toward Nicaragua as were consistent with the nature of the
case."

United States,
Message and Documents (Abridgment, 1895-1896).

CENTRAL AMERICA, Guatemala: A. D. 1895.

Mexican boundary dispute.

See (in this volume)

MEXICO: A. D. 1895.

CENTRAL AMERICA, Nicaragua: A. D. 1896-1898.

Revolutionary conflicts.

Vice President Baca of Nicaragua joined a revolutionary

movement which was set on foot in February, 1896, by the
Clericals, for the overthrow of President Zelaya, and was
declared Provisional President. The rebellion had much support
from exiles and friends in Honduras; but the government of
that State sustained and assisted Zelaya. The insurgents were
defeated in a number of battles, and gave up the contest in
May. During the civil war American and British marines were
landed on occasions at Corinto to protect property there. In
1897, and again in 1898, there were renewed insurrections,
quickly suppressed.
CENTRAL AMERICA, Costa Rica: A. D. 1896-1900.
Boundary dispute with Colombia settled by arbitration.

See (in this volume)

COLOMBIA: A. D. 1893-1900.

{74}

CENTRAL AMERICA, Nicaragua—Costa Rica: A. D. 1897.

A dispute between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, as to the eastern

extremity of their boundary line, was decided by General
Alexander, a referee accepted by the two republics. The
boundary had not been well defined in a treaty negotiated for
its settlement in 1858. According to the terms of the treaty,
the line was to start from the Atlantic at the mouth of the
San Juan river; but changes of current and accumulation of
river drift, etc., gave ground for dispute as to where the
river actually made its exit. President Cleveland in 1888,
acting as arbitrator at the request of the two countries,
decided that the treaty of 1858 was valid, but was not clear
as to which outlet of the delta was the boundary. Finally, in
1896, an agreement was reached for a final survey and marking
of the boundary line, and President Cleveland, on request,
appointed General Alexander as arbitrator in any case of
disagreement between the surveying commissions. The decision
gives to Nicaragua the territory upon which Greytown is
situated, and practical control of the mouth of the canal.

CENTRAL AMERICA, Guatemala: A. D. 1897-1898.

Dictatorship of President Barrios.
His assassination.

In June, 1897, President José M. Reyna Barrios, whose six

years term in the presidency would expire the next March,
fearing defeat in the approaching election, forcibly dissolved
the National Assembly and proclaimed a dictatorship. Three
 months later a revolt was organized by General Prospero
Morales; but Barrios crushed it with merciless energy, and a
veritable reign of terror ensued. In February, 1898, the
career of the Dictator was cut short by an assassin, who shot
him to avenge the death of a wealthy citizen, Don Juan
Aparicio, whom Barrios had executed for expressing sympathy
with the objects of the rebellion of the previous year.
Control of the government was then taken by Dr. Cabrera, who
had been at the head of the party which supported Barrios. A
rising under Morales was again attempted, but failed. Morales,
in a dying condition at the time, was betrayed and captured.
Cabrera, with no more opposition, was elected President for
six years.

CENTRAL AMERICA, Nicaragua—Costa Rica: A. D. 1900.

Agreements with the United States respecting the control of
territory for interoceanic canal.

See (in this volume)

CANAL, INTEROCEANIC, A. D. 1900 (DECEMBER).

CENTURY, The Nineteenth:

Date of its ending.
Its character and trend.
Comparison with preceding ages.
Its failures.

See (in this volume)

NINETEENTH CENTURY.

CERVERA, Rear-Admiral,
and the Spanish Squadron at Santiago de Cuba.

See (in this volume)

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1898 (APRIL-JUNE);
and (JULY 3).
CHAFFEE, General Adna R.:
At Santiago.

See (in this volume)

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1898 (JUNE-JULY).

CHAFFEE, General Adna R.:

Commanding American forces in China.

See (in this volume)

CHINA: A. D. 1900 (JUNE-AUGUST);
(JULY); and (AUGUST).

CHAFFEE, General Adna R.:

Report of the allied movement to Peking
and the capture of the city.

See (in this volume)

CHINA: A. D. 1900 (AUGUST 4-16).

CHAKDARRA, Defense of.

See (in this volume)

INDIA: A. D. 1897-1898.

CHALDEA, New light on ancient.

See (in this volume)

ARCHÆOLOGICAL RESEARCH: BABYLONIA.

CHAMBERLAIN, Joseph:
Appointed British Secretary of State for the Colonies.

See (in this volume)

ENGLAND: A. D. 1894-1895; and 1900 (NOVEMBER-DECEMBER).

CHAMBERLAIN, Joseph:
 Conference with Colonial Premiers.

See (in this volume)

ENGLAND: A. D. 1897 (JUNE-JULY).

CHAMBERLAIN, Joseph:
Controversies with the government of
the South African Republic.

See (in this volume)

SOUTH AFRICA (THE TRANSVAAL): A. D. 1896 (JANUARY-
APRIL);
1896-1897 (MAY-APRIL), and after.

CHAMBERLAIN, Joseph:
Testimony before British Parliamentary Committee
on the Jameson Raid.
Remarks in Parliament on Mr. Rhodes.

See (in this volume)

SOUTH AFRICA (THE TRANSVAAL): A. D. 1897 (FEBRUARY-
JULY).

CHAMBERLAIN, Joseph:
Instructions to the Governor of Jamaica.

See (in this volume)

JAMAICA: A. D. 1899.

CHAMBERLAIN, Joseph:
Reassertion of British suzerainty over
the South African Republic.
Refusal to arbitrate questions of disagreement.

See (in this volume)

SOUTH AFRICA (THE TRANSVAAL): A. D. 1897 (MAY-
OCTOBER);
 and 1898-1899.

CHAMBERLAIN, Joseph:
Declaration of South African policy.

See (in this volume)

SOUTH AFRICA (THE FIELD OF WAR): A. D. 1901.

CHANG CHIH-TUNG, Viceroy:

Admirable conduct during the Chinese outbreak.

See (in this volume)

CHINA: A. D. 1900 (JUNE-DECEMBER).

CHEMICAL SCIENCE, Recent advances in.

See (in this volume)

SCIENCE, RECENT: CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS.

CHEROKEES, United States agreement with the.

See (in this volume)

INDIANS, AMERICAN: A. D. 1893-1899.

CHICAGO: A. D. 1894.
Destruction of the Columbian Exposition buildings.

By a succession of fires, January 9, February 14, most of the

buildings of the Exposition, with valuable exhibits not yet
removed, were destroyed.

CHICAGO: A. D. 1896.
Democratic National Convention.

See (in this volume)

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1896 (JUNE-NOVEMBER).