Tennessee's Kentucky home

(From a 2005 letter from Scott Kenan, who is writing a book titled "Twilight Watch in Dragon Country: Six Months with Tennessee Williams.")

Tennessee credited Henry with teaching him to paint, including that Henry had shown him how to first paint the canvas black so that colors on top of that would subtly intensify. I remember when Tennessee got word that Henry had left him Falling Timbers. He was both pleased and horrified--pleased for the gesture, but horrified by the thought of having to deal with what the name "Falling Timbers" suggested. At the time he was finishing the play "A House Not Meant to Stand" which was really about society, but the play was set in a derelict house. It was performed in the Goodman Theatre in Chicago in April, 1982. Besides all of that, Tennessee's own house was in a state of disrepair. He had hired am electrician to make an emergency repair, and when the electrician pointed out some other problems that needed attention, he said not to bother. He wanted the house to collapse on him the moment he died. He had said a couple of times that we would go to inspect Falling Timbers, but like with so many of Tennessee's intentions, nothing happened.
(Note: Tennessee actually did make the trip and noted that it had fallen very far.)

Henry and the baby

(From the "Kentucky Kernel")
http://www.kernel.uky.edu/1996/spring/0212/d1.html

"A patron came up to the concession counter during a film complaining about a crying baby," Mills said. "The usher returned without locating the baby."

Mills, decided to check on the patron's complaint himself. Thus, Mills entered into the Theatre and sat down. Listening carefully, Mills moved closer to the baby-like whimper.

Following the whimper all the way to the front row, Mills looked down the isle to discover local artist Henry Faulkner holding a baby goat (a kid).

Well-viewed Henry painting

(From the Key West Hemmingway House website
http://www.hemingwayhome.com/HTML/house.htm)

The painting over the bed (in the master bedroom) was painted by Henry Faulkner and was acquired by the museum in 1974. The artist loved animals and had a pet goat named "Alice" that he hid in the painting of the home. When Papa lived in the Key West house the original Miro painting entitled "The Farm" hung over the bed -- he purchased it from the artist in Paris. The original is now in the National Gallery, in Washington, D.C.

Lois, a female Henry

(The following is adapted from a newspaper column I wrote in 1982 while doing research on Henry. Lois was Henry's older sister and kindred spirit who spent much time with him after he finally got away from foster care in the mountains. Keep in mind this column was for a small town weekly.)

I met Lois in Louisville after she'd flown in from California to stay with her sister-in-law so she could fill me in on Henry's early life. Lois is old, I'll grant you-72 aln't' hay-but she's as youthful in spirit as a girl scout on roller skates. Geez, it's going to be tough to pull this piece off; I mean I'm talking controversial. So I'll try to describe Lois in as detached a manner as I possibly can-which won't be easy because I was sort of smitten by her, in spite of myself.

I interviewed Lois in the living room of her straight-laced sister-in-law's home. She sat happily in a comfortable arm chair and bidded me to sit down and talk. Her long white hair was braided on either side, Indian style, and she looked like a mischieious squaw with her coarse braids all done up with do-dads and hanging down over a brightly patterned dashiki.

When she talked of the early days with her brother in California her face lit up like a Christmas tree, her little eyes flashing the fire of a teenage Gypsy. They were hard, mean days during the depression. when Californians thought more of coyotes than of dust bowl Oakies and starving hillbillies. But for Lois they were days full of adventure and zest for life. And, more than any time since, days of unbounded freedom. When the weather permitted there were glorious days and nights in Los Angeles' Griffith Park, three thousand acres of woods and grass and mocking birds, and starry skies to sleep under and crisp spring water to bathe in.

Lois had come out a dozen years earlier, in 1926, a waiflike 15-year-old riding the rails like a hobo. There were no jobs for experienced workers, much less for countrified teenage girls. The obvious alternative taken by untold thousands of girls in like straights lacked imagination to someone like Lois, brimming with the possibilities of life. Now, I'm not suggesting that the alternative she chose is a natural one, or that it be reccommended to impressionable youths. And it was certainly lacking in moral purpose. But to Lois, becoming a, uh, pickpocket represented a way to survive and keep her dignity. And I suppose it goes without saying that it appealed to her sense of adventure.

When Henry, freed from the same Louisville orphanage she'd run away from, joined her about 1940, Lois was an accomplished "lifter" with fingers sticky as a tar baby, and she'd crossed the country several times to relieve rich tourists in Miami of their filthy lucre.

Lois is a genuine counter-culture person, one whose view of the general state of affairs of society is. let's say, slightly askew from that of most of us. Those who lack imagination might find it hard to swallow, but she does seem to have a working relationship with God. She is a devout believer, in fact. She even told me of complicity with the Lord once wherein she asked His help in ripping off a wealthy drunk so that she and her girlfriend might eat on one of her cross country jaunts. . . but I won't go into that.

There were many such jaunts over the years, of 1iving off the land and the occasional steak pilfered from the neighborhood grocery, a lifetime of living on society's fringe, making sneak attacks inside its boundry for a quiik material grab, then a fast retreat to her world without government's pesky rules.

It was a life of anonymity, sans social security numbers and Blue Cross cards, in what writer Ken Auletta calls the "underclass" in a new book by that name. Then, at age 68, when most grandmothers are gracefully acquiescing to the toll of their years, Lois was thrust into the national spotlight as "Grandma Marijuana." Yes, the press had a field day after she was busted in 1979 for distributing the stuff to neighborhood kids in Simi Valley, Californl. "Spreading Cheer 'Pot Granny' Says," headlined the Los Angeles Times. The stories continued for months and made the international wire services and at least one national magazine.

What happened was that Lois, who had started making marijuana tea two years before because she'd read it cures high blood pressure, started giving some of the outlaw weed to neighborhood teenagers strung out on such dangerous drugs as PCP (the notorious "Ange1 Dust" you may have read about). The case probably wouldn't have gotten very far-a grandmother and all that-except. that Lois is not your average bear. She was totaly unrepentent, and, in fact conducted numerous interviews with reportes happily extoillng the virtues of marijuana.

"I'm not sorry," she told a UPI, reporter. "Why? Kids need marijuana to relax. It takes the kids off hard drugs. The judge's reaction was entirely predictable. "It is particularly appaillng," he said, "that, recalling the age of life that (Lois) is, she would not have better insight." Sixty days in stir, was the judge's way of showing his contempt.

Which got Lois even more notoriety. So much so that Martha Scott, a producer-actress who'd appeared in movies such as "Ben Hur" and "The Ten Commandments," confirmed to a reporter that she was considering making a movie based on Lois' life.

Which of course generated even more publicity, and so on, so that the effect was to give Lois a national platform for espousing her unsocial views. Nor has she now, at 72, lightened up. Indeed, she took great delight recounting her jail time and of carrying on the fight and all that, and did so with such vigor that I expected her any minute to cast aside her walking stick for a banner and go out in search of a parade.

Now, please, letter writers, bear in mind this piece IS NOT about marijuana; it is only a report about an "old" woman I met this past weekend whose zest for living was almost a tangible thing, and an awesome thing to behold.

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