Small Town Noir

Braily Muse was fifty-two years old when, in the early hours of Monday, the twenty-first of May, 1945, he was arrested for being drunk and disorderly. There is no record of his life before or after the event. Braily’s picture is one of the hundred or so New Castle mug shots for which I haven’t been able to find a story, but I love it anyway—his torn cardigan; his ratty dreadlocks; the cataract in his left […]

Benjamin Deiger’s father delivered candy for J B Nessie’s confectionery for more than fifty years. He started in 1904, making deliveries across Lawrence County by horse-drawn wagon. He switched to a truck in 1918, a year after Benjamin’s birth and a few months before his wife’s death from pneumonia. The truck was a great help, although he missed the horses. When Benjamin grew up and left school, he got a job in the Red and […]