A. B. GUTHRIE, JR.

by Kevin Roark

Alfred Bertram Guthrie, Jr., also known as Bud, was born in Bedford Indiana 13 January 1901. In July of that year Guthrie and his family moved to Choteau, Montana. Guthrie was on of only three of nine siblings to live past childhood. He remembered the funerals and as a result of attending them he developed a hatred for the smell of carnations. Guthrie spent time working at his father's newspaper in Montana during his high school years. He attended the University of Montana School of Journalism, graduating in 1923. Guthrie spent his summer breaks working for the United States Forest Service and as a ranch hand. Guthrie's first newspaper job since graduation came in 1926 as a reporter for the Lexington Leader in Lexington, Kentucky. In A Literary History of Kentucky William S. Ward quotes one of Guthrie's main reasons for coming to Kentucky, "At a dance at the Many Glacier Hotel I met a girl from the Bluegrass, who gave me such a sales talk about it, that I determined some day to see it." Guthrie was intrigued by the concept of blue grass. He married Harriet Helen Larson in the sixth month of 1931. They had a son, Alfred Bertram Guthrie III, on the 4th of November 1932. In 1939 a daughter, Helen Larson Guthrie was born on June 17. In 1944 Guthrie was approved for a Neiman Fellowship at Harvard. His first collection of short stories, The Big It and Other Stories, was published in 1960. In it Guthrie illustrates that what is expected often does not occur in nature.

In The Big It the group of people who are supposed to be impressed and frightened are not at all. A cannon mounted on a mule is used in an attempt to show a group of Native Americans, in town for trading goods and supplies, that the white men are superior in intelligence and technology. When the fuse on the cannon is lit, the mule begins to kick and thrash about, sending the business end of the brass cannon painting at various locations among the crowd gathered to watch the spectacle. Everyone excitedly takes cover except the Indians. When the mountain howitzer fires, the cannon ball shoots straight into the ground. The narrator asks the chief what he thought: he answered, "How?", he paused, and then said "Paleface jack-ass poop." The townspeople set out to impress and humiliate the Indians; yet their plan, like the cannon, did not hit the intended target. The Indians are shown as calm, rational thinkers rather than wild and savage.

Guthrie illustrates the unexpected in nature. In The Therefore Hog, a cook hogs the one bed, refusing to share the comfortable sleep with his companion. When the companion takes his ice cold gun, frosty from hanging near the window, and places it on the cook's exposed foot he wakes and screams that his foot has been burned by an unexplained force. After the cook returns to his slumber the cold gun contacts his rump. Again the cook rises and proclaims he has been burned by unknown creatures in his bed. The cook leaves the room, refusing to attempt sleeping with whatever it is that burns him. The companion gladly takes the bed with the feeling of a job well done. A frosty cold gun is not usually conceptualized as causing a burning sensation. Guthrie reminds that lines sometimes blur in nature and what is thought of as opposites often bring about the same end results.

Following one's senses often results in incorrect conclusions. In The Wreck, which is set in Kentucky, a man is arrested at the scene of an accident for driving while drunk. The smell of alcohol was strong on him. He is convicted by a jury. Only after the man's business declines and he becomes an alcoholic, does he learn the truth. A good samaritan had stopped at the accident scene to pour whiskey on the man's wounds. What is often thought of as facts are anything but.

Guthrie's exposure to the wide expanse of nature at an early age and his experience with the U.S. Forest Service and the ranches, resulted in a love of nature. He not only portrayed the obvious beauty and power of nature; but he also went beyond to expose the irony hidden just below the surface. Nature does not always function in the manner humanity expects.

Guthrie, A.B. The Big It and Other Stories. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960.

Ward, William S. A Literary History of Kentucky. Knoxville TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1988.

by Vernon Kevin Roark

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