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ROCKDALE
- Traces of the town that George Sessions Perry knew and wrote about
in the first half of the Twentieth Century can still be found in
Rockdale. All it takes is a little scholarship and imagination.
A visit to the Lucy Hill Memorial Library in downtown Rockdale is
the first stop. Outside, a historical marker outlines Perry's contributions
to American literature and journalism; inside are first editions
of his books and copies of virtually every article he ever wrote
for the Saturday Evening Post, including one titled "The Little
Town That Rained Money" about the day Alcoa came to town.
Alcoa is still in town, but no one is writing about Rockdale raining
money these days. The issues are more contentious now. It's hard
to say which side Perry would come down on but we are sure his affection
for the place would shine through, regardless of his stand on political
issues.
The temptation to look for George Sessions Perry's Rockdale can
be strong because few writers are linked in readers' minds with
a hometown like Perry and Rockdale. Other such writers develop,
at best, an uneasy alliance, like Thomas "You-Can't-Go-Home-Again"
Wolfe and Asheville, North Carolina.
Perry wrote with lifelong affection about his hometown, first as
a novelist and later as a magazine journalist.
"Rockdale, my hometown, is Texas' heart and significant part of
its soul," Perry wrote in his book, "Texas: A World Unto Itself."
He describes the pioneers of Rockdale as typical of restless Southerners
who hitched their wagons and moved to Texas after the Civil War.
"The little group that landed at Rockdale selected this spot because
the land was sandy," he wrote. "It was easy for a tired man and
small, tired mules to plow. There were plenty of building posts
at hand, and the land would grow the broad variety of items a pioneer
family needed."
Noting that the fertile Blackland prairie was just three or four
miles away, Perry wrote: "Rockdale folk were too tired, after their
long, hard journey, to tackle it."
Perry's novel Hold Autumn In Your Hand which won the National Book
Award in 1941, is still the book for which Perry is best known.
The book was made into a popular movie, "The Southerner," starring
Zachary Scott as Sam Tucker, the story's main character. The book
is often compared with Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck, with Perry's
book often getting the higher mark from critics.
The book's main character is Sam Tucker, a poor tenant farmer in
the Brazos River bottoms "contending with nature, the seasons, the
river and more than a few of his fellow men." It's a hard look at
a hard life but Perry's affection for the land and people who live
on it is genuine and unabashed.
In the community of Liberty Hill, it's not hard even now, long after
the dethroning of King Cotton, to see Sam Tucker striding the land
and checking the skies for rain.
In his book Texas: A World In Itself Perry writes about the "jovial
prosperity" that came to Rockdale with the coming of the railroad.
He wrote also of the social order imposed out of that prosperity:
"Mrs. Hicks was the town's first lady, social arbiter and senior
member of a regency which built, directed, and controlled Rockdale's
imposing stucco Baptist church," he wrote "The other member of this
regency was God."
Perry served as a war correspondent in World War II after a broken
arm that never healed properly kept him out of the armed forces.
He was in the first wave of men to hit the beach at Salerno, during
the invasion of Italy.
He never got the images of war out of his mind and could not bring
himself to write a novel about what he saw. Yet he could not imagine
writing fiction without including his experiences in the war.
After the war Perry became one of the highest paid magazine writers
in the country. His series on "Cities of America" was collected
in hardback and he enjoyed success with other books but he never
published another significant piece of fiction.
According to friends and scholars, Perry believed he "sold out"
his talent for a lucrative career in magazine journalism. In order
to be closer to the lucrative magazine markets, Perry and his wife
Claire maintained a home in Connecticut; Perry felt he turned his
back on the hometown that nurtured and inspired him.
All of these doubts and demons were fueled by Perry's struggle with
arthritis, alcoholism and strong symptoms of increasing mental illness.
Those who knew
him in those dark days were not completely surprised when on a cold
December day in 1956 Perry walked out of his house and into a Connecticut
River.
Three months later his body washed up in a nearby town. The coroner
ruled Perry died an "accidental death by drowning."
Few people who knew Perry believed there was anything accidental
about it.
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