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Regional Writers - Humphrey and Clarksville

William Humphrey’s often described idyllic Texas childhood came to an abrupt end with his father’s automobile accident on 5 July 1937.  The accident in which Clarence Humphrey was fatally injured is the central event in Farther Off from Heaven.  This retrospective tells of a turning point in Humphrey’s life which shaped his identify as a writer.  “I lost not only my father,” he said in a 1988 interview, “I lost my life, my whole ‘way’ of life.”

Upon the publication of Father Off from Heaven, William Humphrey came back to Texas in May of 1977, to speak on the release of his memoir.  He returned to Clarksville, the town of his birth, not having visited there in thirty-two years.  Humphrey acknowledged at the time some significant changes:

“Red River County has ceased to be the Old South and became Far West.  I who for years had had to set my Northern friends straight by pointing out that I was a Southerner not a Westerner, and that I had never seen a cowboy or for that matter a beefcow any more than they had, found myself in the Texas of legend and the popular image which when I was a child had seemed more romantic to me than to boy of New England precisely because it was closer to me than to him and yet still worlds away.  Gone from the square were the bib overalls of my childhood when the farmers came to town on Saturday.  Ranchers now, they came in high-heeled boots and rolled-brim hats, a costume that would have provoked surprise, and even more derision, there, in my time, as it would on Manhattan’s Madison Avenue.”

With such glaring contrasts in perspective, I am surprised there has been little interest in the regional writer William Humphrey.  Probably one of the more popular writers from our area, especially for his novel, Home from the Hill, which was made into a feature motion picture.  Some of the filming took place in the Clarksville area, and there are a number of stories about the cast and crew who came to the area for the filming event. 

Anyone out there who would like to tell about such filming activities/escapades?

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