Tags
Appalachia, Charley Conley, George Hooker, history, Logan, Logan Banner, Logan County, music, Tennis Hatfield, The Jughouse Blues, West Virginia
In late March of 1927, Charlie Conley, a prisoner in the Logan County Jail in Logan, WV, sent this poem or song to the Logan Banner, which it printed:
Come all of my companions
And listen to what I say
About the jail of Logan
In which I have to stay.
Hatfield is our sheriff,
But he hasn’t much to say.
But when George Hooker turns the key on you,
He means for you to stay.
There are men in here,
The jailer they would defeat.
But he keeps the key turned on ’em
And gives them heaps to eat.
There is the “bull-pen,”
Which no man likes at all,
Because it’s over-crowded
With no overflow in the hall.
They whoop and they holler
And you would think they are playing ball.
But when they go before Squire Conley
They pay for it all.
Brandon Ray Kirk 
This reminds me of my own small town’s newspaper. They published poetry somewhat regularly (along with all the micro-local columns about who had dinner at whose house, who was sick in bed all weekend with the flu, etc.), and the first thing I ever had published was a poem I (bravely) submitted to them when I was seventeen. The Appalachian tradition of elegies maybe? Poetry in newspapers is not a thing in the upper Midwest, where I live now. I really enjoy your blog, especially the pieces of ephemera you find and post that all so beautifully document this region’s experience of place and time.
Thank you, Katherine!