Copies of Mammy & the Wild Apes are available for $10 at Smith & Sons service station and Riley White Drugs. They can be ordered by mail at 917 Sunset Lane, Russellville, KY 42276 for$12, which includes shipping and handling.

Over the tears, Logan County’s most prolific writer, Algie Ray Smith, has treated his readers to a combination of history and fantasy. I call it Historical Fiction; Ray says the correct term is Historical Nostalgia. In most of his books, there is a fine line between fiction and non-fiction. Often that line is wavy; sometimes it fades into the recesses of the mind.
His latest offering, Mammy and the Wild Apes, features much more fact than fantasy. He talks about the remembrances of his youth with his wise but eccentric grandmother, Cora Jane Woodward Whiting, the central figure.
Her wisdom ranged from the spiritual to the practical, from folklore to fundamental truths. She rocked and consoled them when it was needed and chided them when they were acting like “wild apes.” Chapter 3, “What Mammy Taught Me,” is filled with her barnyard medicinal remedies, some of which would make strong men gag or hide. Yet they proved to be effective.
Almost all of the setting is the Smith family property, which comprised much of Russellville’s East End. What Ray Smith considers East End ranges from the area where the bypass intersects the Bowling Green Road to near the old Logan County Hospital on Franklin Street and to the Russellville Christian Church (formerly Richardson Funeral Home) on Ninth Street.
A tobacco patch where some of the more memorable scenes occur, including “A Monkey in the Tobacco Patch,” was at the top of the hill on the Bowling Green Road near where Gupton Motors is now located.
The central locale, however, is the service station/grocery store which patriarch A.C. Smith owned and operated. Smith & Sons is still in business over 60 years later, owned by ‘sons’ Ken and Algie Ray Smith and manned almost exclusively by Ray in recent years as Ken continues to successfully wage war against an aggressive cancer that would have felled a man of less resolve and toughness.
While A.C. was building and maintaining his successful business, his wife, Louise Whiting Smith, was managing their seven children with the help of her widowed mother, the afore-named Mammy. In addition to Ray and Ken, the Smith siblings were Eva, Joy, Ann, Pat and the oldest son, James Harley.
Ken Smith was a public office holder for over two decades, serving as Logan County Coroner, Russellville city councilman, and mayor of the city for 17 years. He also was a high-ranking officer in the Kentucky National Guard and a long-time lab technician in Russellville’s public and then privately owned hospitals before his retirement.
Algie Ray Smith is a retired school teacher, having taught language arts and practical living at Todd Central High School and Russellville Middle School. He continues as an educator by teaching English classes for Western Kentucky University.
They third ‘ape’ (the girls seemed to have been calmer than their brothers), James Harley, died at age 12 in 1948. He was struck by a car as he and Ken crossed the road between their home and the service station behind three hay wagons, not seeing athecar that was passing the wagons. The solemn chapter dealing with his death is by far the saddest in the autobiographical book.
Algie Ray also tells about getting a call from his mother while he was teaching in Todd County, telling him that Mammy had just died. “Before I went back to class, I went into the restroom and cried my heart out,” he recalls. Yet he directed the senior play that night, knowing Mammy would want him to complete the duties he had accepted.
As is usually the case, this book has the names of hundreds of past and present Logan Countians, along with mentions of many businesses which were an integral part of life in the Land of Logan in the 40’s and 50’s.
Among the Logan Countians named in Mammy and the Wild Apes:
John Wayne Allen, Warren Allen, Annie Woodward Armstrong, Tim Armstrong, Hazel Arnold, Reid Atkins, Hazel Arnold, Delmar Balance, Jerry Balance, Bennie Baldwin, Glenn Baldwin, Frank Banfield, Tony Banfield, Stoney Barker, L.C. Beard, Nell Beasley, Joe Beckham, Janice Bell, Norvell Bibb, Robert Bibb, Doodle Bouldin, Pat Bouldin, Earl Bryant, Jim Bryant, Queen Fuqua Caldwell, Jenny Casebier, Arlene Chapman, J.T. Chapman, Ann Smith Coffman, J.B. Cole, Jenella Cole, John Ross Cole, Donald Wayne Cox, Jerry Wayne Cox, Joe Cox, Marie Cox, Myrtle Ann Cox, Edna Croslin;
Everett Daniel, Jimmy Daniel, Nancy Dilliha, Fonzo Douglas, Leon Douglas, Vernon Dotson, Carol Ryan Duncan, Reggie Dyche, Henry B. Edwards, Nora Edwards, Dog Epley, Aileen. Evans, Thomas Evans, Sally Flowers, Cliente Fugate, J. Taylor Fuqua, Marcia Fuqua, Moses Gaines, Bertram Gass, John Gibbs, Dickie Glenn, Dr. J.P. Glenn, Sonny Green, Mark Griffin, Eloise Hadden, Ruby Hall, Joy Smith Harbison, Betty Mae Harris, Patty Head, Ed Hill, A.T. Hinton, Jere Hopson, Edna Hughes, Dr. L.E. Johnson, Sheriff Douglas Johnson, Belium Jones, Clara Louise Jones, Eva Woodward Jones, Bo Kemp, Donald Kemp, Jonnie ‘Pid’ Kemp, Mary Kemp, A.D. Kirkpatrick, Dr. Pat Kirkpatrick, Butch Klein;
Myrtle Linton, Larry Ludwig, Hattie Woodward McCoy, Martha Moody Mastin, Barbara Milam, Shorty Murphy, Stan Murphy, Dr. Howard Olive, Karol Smith Owen, Eva Smith Page, Kenny Perry, Stella Perry, Eleanor Piper, Andrew F. Price, Mary Price, Coach Powell Puckett, Jesse Reed, Tom Rhea Jr., Brandon Rowe, Mrs. George Russell, Jack Russell, Coach Joe Russell;
Jimmy Sanford, Bobby Sawyer, Paul Sawyer, Jack Schlanger, Sammy Schlanger, Earl Scarbrough, Alvin ‘Peanut’ Shifflett, A.C. Smith, Algie Ray Smith, Betty Wheat Smith, Ernest Smith, James Harley Smith, Kip Smith, Louise Whiting Smith, Ken Smith, Pat Smith, S.C. ‘Smokey’ Smotherman, Emily Sosh, Winky Sosh, Jack Spear, Joe Sydnor, Jean Tanner, Lilly Cole Tanner, Otha Tanner, James Turner, Jim Turner, Marie Turner;
Ray Vencill, Mrs. Charles Vick, Anna Belle Perry Wheat, Lee Wheat, Andrew Harley Whiting, Billy Whiting, Delores McLemore Whiting, Denise Whiting, Frances Whiting, Glendal Whiting, Glennie Clark Whiting, Theodisa Frances Price Whiting, Vernon Whiting, Ernest Williams, Donald Ross Williamson, Alice Rogers Woodward, Browder Woodard, Dave Woodward, Ella Sarver Woodward, Evelyn Frey Woodward, Fannie Woodward, Floyd Woodward, Lena Clark Woodward, Lloyd ‘Boss’ Woodward, Mary Ann Cole Woodward, Myrtle Chandler Woodward, Robert Daniel Woodward, Ross ‘Crick’ Woodward, Young ‘Teeter’ Woodward, Howard Wren, James Wright, Bertha Wyatt . James ‘Happy’ Yarbrough