Old Man Snopes' House in The Town in The Town (Location)

Bought for "old man Snopes," whom some believe is Flem's father and others his uncle, this is "a little house about a mile from town where he lived with an old maid daughter and the twin sons named Vardaman and Bilbo that belonged to I.O. Snopes's other wife" (136). Because this Snopes refuses to get any closer to Jefferson than this spot, "they bought" this house for him (136); "they" must be other Snopeses, but which ones is not made clear. The "house had a little piece of ground with it, that old man Snopes made into a truck garden and water-melon patch" (137). According to Chick Mallison, old man Snopes doesn't sell or eat the watermelons: they are "bait for the pleasure or sport or contest or maybe just getting that mad, of catching boys robbing it; planting and cultivating and growing water-melons just so he could sit ambushed with a loaded shotgun behind a morning glory vine on his back gallery until he could hear sounds from the melon patch and then shooting at it" (137).