After that the road is rough rock and after the second mile from the main highway, it is nothing but creekbed, and forth across where the water now flows. At any time except high water, nothing but a horse or mule can get out, and Twin Creekers usually prefer to walk across the "ridge" into Turkey Creek to reach a better outlet on such occassions. There are 11 crossings of that creek without a bridge between the part where most automobiles must be left, and where Fred Coopers home hangs on the hillside. There isn't an occasional clearing and the rare traveler will pass several shacks on his way up to that center of Twin Creek affairs. But few persons go there, "Forbidden Twin is a right hard country, hits got a right hard name". A native coming out of the hills with a load of railroad ties, is asked his way to Fred Cooper's home. His answer is civil and intelligent, hardly friendly. Fred, too, is civil; his answers to questions intelligent but hardly voluble. His father is buried on the "pint yonder". The "old woman" went to stay with Lillie May when she "got a complaint" but came back when Lillie and him [her husband, McGraw] has a fuss. "Likker? The laws right hard nowdays
I'm 47, Ed's 43, Kenney 31, and Jonas he'd be 29 now. I bought out the old man's place. Well, you might call it bein' a peacemaker, clearin' 'em all out. Sary, that's Lawrence's widow, was a livin on the place. Hits J'inin this" To another question, Fred replies: "I couln't hit ya [answer you] on that". "What started the doins? Well, I couldn't say" Mrs. Ed Cooper is more voluble. "I don't know what they're goin' to do with us, sendin' Ed away, that way", she says. She refers to herself and 4 children left to "shift" for themselves because Ed "got mixed up with the law. Yes, the children attend the same school as Jonas' and Kenney's, but they don't have no doins with 'em'. But one of the boys was in the creek, quite in his birthday clothes, with a couple of Fred's children, just at that moment.
"They get along all right with Fred's" Mrs. Ed Cooper explains. "But you know how it is when you folks don't get along with sombody though. Fred has 5 children at home, Kenney 5, and Jonas 3." Jonas, Scioto County officials say, is the smartest of the family. "Why, I can tell you that," Mrs. Jonas Cooper say. "Howdy. How far is it back down to the Pint?" "Bout half a mile." the stranger laughs and expectorates. "Why, that's what one of your neighbors told me, a half mile or so back up the creek." "Well, you don't want to go all the way back to the Point, that's your car up this side of there, ain't it?" Twin Creek knows its strangers! The visitor walks with the silence of unseen things, sensing dimly that he himself is under observation. By the time the car is reached, the native with the load of tires is encountered again, returning, his wagon light.
"Aire you one of the deppities?" he inquires. "He was right puzzled" as a Twin Creeker would say since deputies carry rifles, not cameras, when traveling that road. So it was easy for him to accept the explanation that the stranger in the valley was a newspaper man. "Well, how aire y'u?" he inquired. and his manner was almost hearty. But this is feud country, for all that, and the next guide is not so fortunate a choice. The question was, "which way to Jonas Cooper's and the person addressed proved to be a Holsinger. And the Holsingers, as all Twin Creek knows, "don't have no doins' with Jonas".
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The Cincinnati Enquirer - Cincinnati OH; 29 Jun 1929
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Contributed by: Doris J Moore
