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occasions but was repeatedly rebuffed. The first time he asked me to make a financial offer and said that “Mrs. Hopkins” might accept ten thousand dollars, but he then recanted. The next year he told me that “Mrs. Hopkins isn’t doing any more interviews,” and two years later he reiterated that “Mrs. Hopkins isn’t interested.” Three years after that, he explained that “it’s too painful for Mrs. Hopkins,” and in my last attempt, he asked me to write a letter in which I explained that I was completing a biography of Lightnin’ Hopkins and asked what terms for a conversation and/or interview might be acceptable. A few weeks later, I received a hand-written reply that stated: “Mrs. Hopkins … declines further interviews. She wishes to simply say … no more reviews of life with Lightnin’.”7 Then it occurred to me that I needed to see Lightnin’s probated will, and when I finally got a copy it all began to make sense. Antoinette was never Mrs. Hopkins. She had an affair with him that lasted an estimated thirty-five years, and during much of that time she was married to someone else with whom she had children. What mattered most to Antoinette was her privacy.

Finally, in 1995, after studying and writing about Texas blues for nearly two decades, I started talking to people in Centerville, Texas, where Lightnin’ grew up. I was trying to get a handle on how Lightnin’ was remembered where he grew up. At Ellis’s Drive-In on State Highway 7, near the intersection with U.S. Highway 75, eighty-three-year-old Estelle Sims leaned on the front counter with her elbows and smiled when asked about Lightnin’. The light from the street shone on her bristly white hair and the deep wrinkles of her face as she spoke in a solemn tone. “I remember hearing him play at a black-eyed pea festival not too far from here back in the thirties. He was good, but it’s been so long that I forget what it was that he actually played.” Then she looked up and pointed across the street. “I suspect that man over there might be able to tell you more. He’s a Hopkins.”

I thanked her and walked across the street, the July heat drawing a sticky asphalt smell from the pavement. Oland Hopkins was sitting in the shade of a post oak tree beside a rusty pick-up truck filled with hay and a few watermelons that he was casually trying to sell to passersby. As I got closer to him, he stood up abruptly and asked, “Can I help you, sir?”

I explained that I was looking for information about Lightnin’ Hopkins, and he muttered, “I’m a distant relation of his, but I don’t know too much. I used to hear him play at church association picnics and suppers, but that’s about it. You ought to talk to J. D. Kelly. Now, he should be able to tell you more.”

The pay phone next to Ellis’s Drive-In was hot and clammy. I dialed Kelly’s number quickly, and he answered after the second ring. Kelly had a hoarse but friendly voice and was eager to share what he knew. “That’s right,” he said, “I growed up with him. We just went from place to place to play all over this countryside. He had a guitar slung on his shoulder, and he picked and sang at ring-play parties. He was a playboy. All he wanted to do was pick.” He told me if I wanted to find out anything else, I should give Oscar Davis a call. He was a cousin of Lightnin’s and his last remaining kin in Centerville.

Davis, however, was more suspicious than the other two. He stammered, “Who are you? And what do you want?” I tried to answer, but before I could finish my sentence, he grumbled, “Talk to my wife. I’m hard of hearing.” When his wife got on the telephone, she was even more suspicious than he had been. “Sure, I remember Lightnin’ Hopkins. What’s it to you? I remember Lightnin’ Hopkins. He come to our house. He was my husband’s first cousin, but I didn’t really know him. You need to talk to Oscar’s brother and he’s right here beside me, getting ready to go to Houston.” There was a short pause, and then the brother got on the phone and said, “I’m too young. I didn’t really know Lightnin’. Sorry, I can’t help you. Thank you and good-bye.”

I hung up