"MAN of CONSTANT SORROW AN AMERICAN MEMORY" was self published in March, 2024. “Man of Constant Sorrow An American Memory” began with the title “You Are My Flower”, a song Flatt and Scruggs made famous years ago and favorite of my father. Flatt and Scruggs figured in our lives, along with early country music, all in my father’s background. This story was begun in 1998 as a sort of remembrance and took on a life of its own within a very short time. What started as a story about my father and his family mystery and the idea I would never know what happened, unknown for good as far as I knew was a story beginning 20 or so years before I was born. In 1932 two meddling fathers made up a rumor still ricocheting today, their unseemly behavior dividing people who continue to carry their beliefs, right or wrong, determined sides taken and kept. People won’t talk to each other, people blame and point accusatory fingers at each other, no room for love, or interest in forgiveness or understanding, except for a very few. Those people never want to know what happened-they only want to take sides. Fifty years after I was born, through a single chance meeting at a gallery on Canyon Road where I worked in Santa Fe answers started falling into place.
This is the story.