Photo album

      The Miler used late-1950s settings in and around Harlan, Ky. Here are a few photographs of locations for the story. (Updated 7-17-07)

HARLAN COUNTY COURTHOUSE (1965)

 with the coal monument on the corner.

From the chapter, Making the Team:

I headed downtown to sit with five guys perched on the coal monument at the corner of the Harlan County Courthouse. The view from the wall made it easy to see who was going in or out of Green-Miller Drug on the opposite corner of First and Central.

“How ya doin’?” I asked Rustbucket as I checked the granite cap of the wall to make sure it was clear of anything that could stain my pants.

Hunched over, glancing occasionally at the drug store door as he dangled his feet against the hard-sealed coal blocks, Rustbucket spat a brown stream of Mail Pouch chewing tobacco into a Coca-Cola cup. Bulls-eye. “Not bad, Jaybird. You?”

    HUFF PARK FIELD (1960)

 Ray Cawood, the author's brother.

From the chapter, Welcome to Rosenwald:

        The football team gathered on the field for spring practice. I had company at last, for a few weeks.  After the team finished its calisthenics, Horse waved his helmet as he shouted, “Get your butt over here, JJ, and run laps with us!”

IVY HILL ROAD (1965)

at the first curve with "Jenny's cliff"

From the chapter, Interesting Time:

Swirling leaves in its wake, a car rounded toward me and moved to the center of the road to give me ample space at the edge of the sheer drop. As I headed alongside the small cliff on the bulge of the first curve, a voice called my name, leading my eyes to Jenny Lee, sitting on the brow of a rock face about twelve feet up from the road.

Whoa. “What are you doing there?”

  IVY STREET (1965) at the bottom.

The author's childhood home (setting for the James family house) is in the right foreground.

From the chapter, First Sweat:

            Just when life seemed predictable, the sun rose on me – from an unlikely place – next door, at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Handley. A quiet couple who liked to sit on their screened-in side porch in the warm season, the Handleys could see our playthings tumbling down our side slope into their yard, yet they never complained. They never ordered us off their property the way Mr. Cutler did when he was drunk and didn’t want the neighborhood boys playing “Whoever Gets The Ball Gets Tackled” on his lawn. Mr. Cutler’s yard had the advantage of being flat, being on the part of Ivy Street that levels out at the bottom of Ivy Hill. One summer afternoon, when four of us climbed his apple tree to pick some fruit, Mr. Cutler strode onto his porch and shot a rifle in the air. We dropped out of the branches as a group and didn’t play in his yard after that.

VIEW OF HARLAN from the porch southward

From the chapter, Rain Walk:

        Easing up to the waist-high brick wall, he gazed through the screen toward the valley where the mountains folded into layers of fading blue in the gray of the rain.

UNION COLLEGE TRACK (1960)

Willie Hudson of Knox Central,center  [See REVIEWS]

Mile race start, Southeastern Kentucky Regional

From the chapter, First Call for the Mile:

"POW!" Motion eats the fear whole...                                 

                                                                    Photo courtesy of Howard Denham York, Jr., Harlan, Ky

DENNY RAY'S DRIVE-IN (1970s)

From the chapter, Summer Pursuits

.                   

By August, Stoner and I started making the evening rounds in his white 1952 Plymouth. First we went to the Youth Center three floors above the Modern Electric store across from Green-Miller. There we looked for someone to dance with; or, failing that, someone to talk to; or, failing that, someone to look at. Though Jug wanted to be with a girl, he went to the side room to shoot pool because that was easier. If we couldn’t find girls, we piled into Stoner’s Plymouth and headed to Jack’s Drive-In on the south edge of town to see who was there. Usually we found at Jack’s a car load of girls who had been at the Youth Center but were looking for someone other than us.

 So we drove to Denny Ray’s Drive-In three miles south of Harlan and ordered something from the carhop while Jug played the pinball machine inside. I saved a large cup of leftover ice to take on a drive through the Sunny Acres subdivision near Denny Ray’s. Cruising along, I heaved the slush at a black, wiry-haired dog that chased us. These encounters offered a certain fulfillment to us and to the dog. We were all chasing something, hoping for a nice surprise.