My father's hometown, Carthage, Tennessee, sits on a bluff overlooking the Cumberland River. A steel bridge spans the river, and ten minutes after turning off the interstate, one can park in front of the courthouse. Fifty years ago Carthage was not so accessible. At the west end of town a toll road stretched toward Red Boiling Springs. The train station was across the river, and to reach Carthage one had to ride Tolliver's Ferry or use Abraham Oldacre's bridge. The bridge was a patchwork, wooden affair, but confident that wood could withstand the wash of water and money better than metal, Old Man Oldacre bought a bus. When a church wasn't renting it, the bus was parked behind Oldacre's cafe, just off the square. When the afternoon train arrived, Monroe Dowd took off his apron, closed the cafe, and drove across the river to pick up the drummers who had come up from Nashville. A migrant countryman from Defeated Creek, Monroe Dowd marveled at his employer's success, and before they left the bus, drummers always knew that Old Man Oldacre had arrived in Carthage 30 years earlier as a Jewish peddler carrying pots and pans and a different last name. Now he owned, as Monroe pointed out, the cafe, the bridge, and as some said, part of the variety store and the bank. The ride across the bridge was short, and Monroe told his story rapidly. Rarely were drummers able to interrupt him. One day however, a drummer sniffing a good marriage behind the peddler's success, managed to force a question into Monroe's