Cara's voice came soft, with a hint of repressed tears.
"He has already given me good advice, dear—" she said, "good advice that I can't follow."
[GEORGE BINGHAM]
George Bingham ("Dunk Botts"), newspaper humorist, was born near Wallonia, Kentucky, August 1, 1879. He quit school at the age of ten years to become "the devil" in a printing office at Eddyville, Kentucky. Two years later he removed to Mayfield, Kentucky, and accepted a position on The Mirrow. Shortly afterwards he wrote his first ficticious "news-letter" from an imaginary town called Boney Ridge, Kentucky, and submitted it to the critical eye of a tramp printer. This nomad at once saw the boy's design: to burlesque the letters received from the Mirrow's crossroad correspondents; and he encouraged him. Mr. Bingham remained at Mayfield until he was twenty years of age, at which time he felt important enough to go out and see the world. Like most prodigals homesickness seized him for its very own; and he started home perched high on a freight train. Homeward bound he first had the name of his future paper suggested to him. Battling through a tiny town in Tennessee he enquired of the brakeman as to its name.
"Walhalla," answered the "shack."
"Hogwallow?" repeated the young Kentuckian.
"Hell no! Who ever heard of a place called 'Hogwallow'?"
Upon reaching home Mr. Bingham decided to put the village of Hogwallow, Kentucky, on the map. His first letter from that town was printed in the old Mayfield Monitor, under the pen-name of "Dunk Botts," which he has retained hitherto. After having written several Hogwallow letters, he was compelled to accept a position on a small newspaper; then nothing more was heard of Hogwallow until 1901, when he wrote a letter every few weeks, for a year, and then went to California. He "arrived back home on June 1, 1905, had a chill a week later, and launched The Hogwallow Kentuckian on July 15." He took the public into his confidence, telling them that his object was to conduct a burlesque newspaper, or, rather, a parody on one. He peopled his imaginary town and its environs with forty or more characters whose names summed them up without further ado; and he founded such important places as Rye Straw, Tickville, Hog Hill church and graveyard, Wild Onion schoolhouse, Gander Creek, and several other necessary hamlets and institutions. On May 15, 1909, Mr. Bingham suspended publication in order to make another trip to California. Two years later he returned to Kentucky for the sole purpose of resurrecting his paper. He resumed publication on June 17, 1911, at Paducah, but Irvin Cobb's town seemingly got on his nerves and, after three months, he tucked his "sheet" under his arm and returned to his first love, Mayfield, where he has remained ever since. The Hogwallow Kentuckian is published every Saturday night, read in thirty-seven states, and copied by the leading newspapers of America and England. Mr. Bingham has written more than five thousand "news items" for the paper, besides some five hundred short-stories, sketches, and paragraphs. He contributes considerable Hogwallow news to Charles Hamilton Musgrove's[96] page in The Evening Post of Louisville; but he is an "outside contributor," doing his work at Mayfield.