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EXPLORING
KENTUCKY- June 2001 by Katherine Tandy Brown A Place to Go To
On the way into town, I was welcomed in passing by a rosy-cheeked woman and two laughing children who smiled at me from within an Amish buggy drawn by a high-stepping bay horse. Named in 1867 to honor James Guthrie, president of the L&N Railroad and member of Congress, this hamlet once claimed to be the crossroads of railroads in America as it lay at the point of intersection of two major L & N lines (the Memphis Line or Henderson Division), and at the turn of the century, thrived with 1,200 citizens, 50 businesses, a large hotel, race track, two publishers and an electric plant. Robert Franklin Warren, a banker, came here in 1900 and married teacher Anna Ruth Penn in 1904. The following year, he fathered his first child, Robert Penn, who lived in Guthrie until 1921. Standing at the corner of Third and Cherry Streets, on the edge of Guthrie’s business district, the Robert Penn Warren Birthplace House, where the writer lived until age five, was at the time a rental property for the family. Returning to the well-kept, red brick railroad bungalow as an adult, he asked to see the bathroom to re-visit a memory of being given a bath by his mother. In the only poem written about any of his boyhood residences, Warren recalled the dappled sunlight on the linoleum floor. Poetry was only one facet of the broad scope of this literary giant. Truly an American man of letters, he also excelled as a novelist, critic, essayist, short story writer and dramatist, and penned a biography of his father and several children’s stories as well. So-called for his
flaming shock of hair, “Red” Warren won the
Pulitzer Prize three times. The first was in 1947 for All
the King’s Men, a novel describing the rise and fall
of a charismatic, ruthless Southern politician who
closely resembled Louisiana Gov. Huey P. Long.
Subsequently, the work was made into an Academy
Award-winning movie. Warren’s other two prizes were
for poetry in 1958 and in 1979. Not bad for a fellow who entered Vanderbilt University to study chemistry. He had a scientific mind, said guide Jeane Moore, “But then the English department got hold of him. He got involved in the Fugitives (a famous group of poets in Nashville), and his life changed completely.” Graduating from Vandy summa cum laude in 1925, Warren went on for a Master’s at the University of California at Berkeley and did graduate work at Yale before winning a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford. Throughout his illustrious life, he supported himself and his family by writing and teaching, eventually landing as professor emeritus at Yale. Though much of his later work was done in a converted barn in Connecticut, Warren looked to his Kentucky roots for the focus of much of his writing, which included early to mid-20th century small town characters and events covering more than 150 years of Southern history. Family influences came from his maternal grandfather, a Civil War veteran, and his father, who dreamed of becoming a poet and read classic literature to Red and his two siblings. His brother Thomas, who became a Guthrie businessman, once said he was proud of his brother but never read any of his books. Today, his first Guthrie home is cozy in a writerly fashion, with period antiques that include several book cases, one filled with the internationally-acclaimed author’s first editions, another with his foreign language editions, Warren’s desk, and original fireplaces and hardwood floors. Memorabilia such as a pair of candlesticks he made, a set of his boyhood electrical books he drew in and his collection of newspaper clippings about his childhood chum Kent Greenfield, a pro baseball player with the Giants and Braves, also are in the home. Photos of the writer abound, but the most telling is a poster-sized enlargement of a black-and-white magazine photo taken when he’d been named the country’s first poet laureate. It was the same year the American Beauty rose was made the national flower, and the photo depicts him holding a rose, with surprise and delight illuminating his face. That fact that this lovingly-preserved home is in Guthrie at all is a testimony to small town determination and pride in its heritage. In a nationally-publicized event, Western Kentucky University, whose Robert Penn Warren Library houses his private book collection, expressed an interest in buying the home in 1986 and moving it to the Bowling Green campus. Incensed, concerned citizens in Guthrie formed the Committee for the Preservation of the Robert Penn Warren Birthplace in Todd County, Inc. The group took up donations, got a VA loan and bought the structure in 1987. “It was a fight,” said Moore, who serves as the corporation’s president, “But little ol’ Guthrie won!” A grant from the Kentucky Heritage Council paid for refurbishing, and the porch had to be repaired when a tornado took down two trees in the front yard. But in 1989 the home finally was opened to the public. Hard-working volunteers lead tours and host luncheons, catered events, card parties and yard sales to raise funds for house payments. Often, among its several thousand yearly visitors are members of the Robert Penn Warren Circle, a group now nearly 300 strong started in 1980 by Dr. Victor Strandberg, a Warren scholar at Duke University. Each year in April, the group meets on the weekend of the writer’s birthday, and sometimes a few members convene in Guthrie and the home’s committee ladies serve them lunch. One such gathering was attended by a Russian whose life is devoted to interpreting Warren’s works. “He could barely speak English,” said Moore, “but he would look on the shelf, see a book and exclaim, ‘Oh! I just translated that one!’ “We gave him a t-shirt,” she laughed. Visitors can get one too, in the tiny gift shop, which also features copies of Warren’s in-print works, such as “Night Rider,” a 1939 novel about the West Kentucky tobacco wars. Museum hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11:30 to 3:30 and Sundays from 2 until 4. While you’re in
the neighborhood, be sure to peruse train memorabilia in
the Guthrie Railroad Museum, housed in a bright red
restored caboose, and in nearby Fairview, get an
eagle’s view of Southwest Kentucky’s rural
landscape from the top of the Jefferson Davis Monument,
which at 351 feet is the country’s third-tallest
obelisk. Katherine Tandy
Brown is a staff writer for The Lane Report. |
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Copyright 1996-2001, by Kentucky Business Online. All rights reserved. Editorial
content is copyright 2001, Lane Communications Group The Lane Report is a trademark of Lane Communications Group. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. |
Having grown up in a
small Southwestern Kentucky town, I felt right at home
driving into Guthrie, a community of 1,700 that nestles
up to the Tennessee border, to visit the birth home of
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Penn Warren. My
father had known him at Vanderbilt University and I
looked forward to finding out more about this
internationally-acclaimed writer.