I.O. Snopes

Gavin Stevens describes him: "I.O., the blacksmith-cum-schoolmaster-cum-bigamist, or -times bigamist, multiplied by bigamy - a thin undersized voluble weasel-faced man talking constantly in a steady stream of worn saws and proverbs usually having no connection with one another nor application to anything else, who even with the hammer would not have weighed as much as the anvil he abrogated and dispossessed" (37). He is the father of Montgomery Ward by his first wife and Vardaman, Bilbo, and Clarence by his second wife. His last appearance in Jefferson features his encounter with Miz Mannie Hait and Flem Snopes over some mules. (Readers of The Mansion, the Snopes novel that followed The Town, learn that "I.O." probably stands for "Initials Only.")