A Fine Dark Line
Chapter One
THE DEW DROP DRIVE-IN AND CONCESSION, 1958
MY NAME is Stanley Mitchel, Jr., and I'll write down what I recall.
This took place in a town named Dewmont, and it's a true story. It
all happened during a short period of time, and it happened to me.
Dewmont got its name from an early settler named Hamm Dewmont.
Little else is known about him. He came, gave his name to the place,
then disappeared from history. Dewmont, during its early days, was a
ratty collection of wooden huts perched on the edge of the Sabine
River in the deep heart of East Texas, a place of red clay and white
sand, huge pines and snake-infested wetlands.
There are faded photographs in the Dewmont library of a scattering
of pioneer hovels on the river's edge as viewed through the lens of
a primitive camera. You wouldn't think much would come of this
beginning, besides maybe a hard rain and a slide into the river, but
through the years, and into the twentieth century, these shacks
gradually inflated into a town as the great trees went down and were
turned to lumber.
Later the town swelled into a small city of about one hundred
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