If I Lie I Die

“Better belly to burst than liquor be lost.”

--Jonathan Swift

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Mark Twain’s Tom and Huck were just a couple of American Pie lads doing what kids do when rafting the river or exploring the forbidden bat caves. Our Truman and Rex would have found that boring.

Truman Knowles and Rex Meade grew up in a little East Texas town, in a section known as North Side. The line of demarcation was the Texas and Pacific Railroad tracks just below West Bonham Street. Like many small towns, the tracks provided a convenient way to separate the silk stockings from the boot socks. Whatever fortune or lack of it that deposited a person on the other side of the tracks automatically tagged him with the surname of Northsider. A Northsider was equated with a have-not—a lot in life cast simply because of geographical happenstance. “North of the tracks” was also synonymous with ignorance and meanness. The Northsider stereotype was so widely accepted that it was once used as a defense when a famous local defense attorney wanted to pry sympathy from his jury. In one particularly brutal aggravated armed-robbery case, the flamboyant Sam Molson Esquire declared: