Felix Martin

I spent some time in Eastern Kentucky over the weekend. While there, I spoke a little bit to a friend about the many people that evacuated their farms following WWII, leaving a great spattering of vacant rural homes throughout that part of the state.

So I gave my mom a call tonight and told her about some of this, how it looked to me, and what my friend had said. My mom's grandparents were from Hell For Certain, Kentucky. She said that what her grandpa did, was right after the war, he basically said "to heck with these rocky hills, I'm going to get me some flat farmland." And he moved the whole family to Salem, Indiana. Before that, he spent a couple of summers working in Ohio and Indiana, in various places, scoping it all out, and saving enough money to get it together. He then moved to Salem, as he thought it would work out the best. So they moved away from Hell-For-Certain, Kentucky in 1946.

The family was really interesting. One of my mom's uncles, Alec, is a preacher and is way into this end-of-the-world, "left behind" bullshit. Another one of her uncles, Isaac, moved to California and was a political activist. I had always heard this, but wasn't clear on what he was all about. So I asked her more about it, and she says that he wrote for a magazine called "News and Letters," and went by the pen name "Felix Martin." He died in 2001. He looked a little bit like Santa Claus. He was my mom's favorite.

So I googled him. Check this out:

"I always read Felix Martin's columns with appreciation and trusted his voice."—Adrienne Rich, author of What is Found There

"Pearl Harbor" by Felix Martin

News and Letters Website

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_and_Letters_Committees

The Labor Editor for News and Letters from 1983-1999 was from Hell For Certain, Kentucky. And he was my great uncle. Amazing. And I thought I leaned left.