I relocated in 1991, to a town where, “you have to know where to go, to get away from the ‘goings-on’.” That is easier said than done here.
William Faulkner published his novel, “Intruder in the Dust” in 1948. The movie was released the following year. Then there was this:
William Faulkner received his Nobel Prize one year later, in 1950. During the selection process in 1949, the Nobel Committee for Literature decided that none of the year’s nominations met the criteria as outlined in the will of Alfred Nobel. According to the Nobel Foundation’s statutes, the Nobel Prize can in such a case be reserved until the following year,and this statute was then applied. William Faulkner therefore received his Nobel Prize for 1949 one year later, in 1950.
www.nobelprize.org/…
For those that haven’t seen the movie in a while, here is the link:
Surprisingly, the author, book, the movie and my new home lead me to the subject of this article. I live in Oxford, Mississippi (where the author lived and the movie was filmed). Two characters in the film caught my eye, the Gowrie twins. They were the young men riding bareback on a mule, following their pa (Nub Gowrie, played by Porter Hall) to retrieve their brother’s body from the quicksand. Look to the scene in the title.
I’d like to introduce you to Edmund and Ephraim Lowe. I found this photo of the brothers in the University of Mississippi Libraries as image 005 in the Martin J. Dain collection, dated December 1961.
I started working as a land surveyor and kept running across the Lowe brother’s name in my research of deeds. They had retired from the craft before I began tromping the hill country here but learned they were still available (if one knew to where to look) to answer question about the land. They were reserved and didn’t waste words unless there was something important to discuss. The local surroundings and observations of it, was a worthy subject. I learned a lot from them.
I never asked them about the “movie days”, minding the advice from my boss (who had been trained in the trade by the two brothers) and who was a close friend of their family.
I recently learned that the Lowe twins had served in the US Air Corps. A photo from the local newspaper The Oxford Eagle, shows the brothers in their uniforms.
The last photo is what most people around here saw when the brothers were in public. This photo was taken by Marilyn Innman in the mid 1990’s. The photo can be found in the John Cofield collection. Not surprising, John’s grandfather, Colonial Cofield, was known for all the official and well known photographs of William Faulkner.
The brothers left this world, {Ephrain died in March 1999 and Edmund in November 2004} leaving an permenent impression for any that look hard enough.
Thanks for your time.