Kentucky is the Shire?
By The closest I have ever gotten to the secret and inner Tolkien was in a casual conversation on a snowy day in Shelbyville, Kentucky. I forget how in the world we came to talk about Tolkien at all, but I began plying questions as soon as I knew that I was talking to a man who had been at Oxford as a classmate of Ronald Tolkien’s. He was a history teacher, Allen Barnett. He had never read The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. Indeed, he was astonished and pleased to know that his friend of so many years ago had made a name for himself as a writer.
“Imagine that! You know, he used to have the most extraordinary interest in the people here in Kentucky. He could never get enough of my tales of Kentucky folk. He used to make me repeat family names like Barefoot and Boffin and Baggins and good country names like that.”
And out the window I could see tobacco barns. The charming anachronism of the hobbits’ pipes suddenly made sense in a new way.
Odd that Kentucky would later define itself through success in a sport that hobbits are singularly maladapted to play…
…although Matt Weiner makes the point that hobbits might make good jockeys. Not sure about that; the weight would be good, but I think jockeys need to be taller than hobbits. Wikipedia suggests that only Bandobras “Bullroarer” Took is known to have been capable of riding a horse.