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History by JIM: about the Town Knocker

By JIM

In the summer of 1902, the Adair County News published an article about an odd critter found most everywhere, the ubiquitous "town knocker." A much-condensed version reads thus:

A knocker is a fellow who never sees anything good in the future, and to whom the present is simply a continuous climax of hard times, rascality and woe.



The knocker never has anything good to say of his neighbor or his town.

The knocker is never so happy as when telling strangers what a poor town he lives in and what a slim chance it offers its young [people] to succeed.

The knocker advises you to go to some other town if you want to succeed and assures you that the only good thing to do in his town is to die.

The knocker is a very well-known animal [locally] and exists principally upon shavings which he whittles with his own snickersnee.

We beg you, don't be a knocker.

(Reprinted from The Bluegrass Clipper, Midway, Ky.)


This story was posted on 2019-11-24 06:12:33
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