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Hardscrabble: Brutal Legend, Rugged Beauty

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Herald Citizen, Cookeville, Tenn., Thursday, August 12, 1965 Denning, Charles. "Hardscrabble: Brutal Legend, Rugged Beauty." Herald Citizen[Cookeville] 12 Aug. 1965. Print. By Charles Denning Hardscrabble may not sound like the name of a fascinating scenic wonder. But it is. Through (sic) ‘hardscrabble’ is not a word in the dictionary ( 1 ), anybody in this part of the country probably has a good idea what it means, whether he is able to put it into words or not. The word has a rural flavor, suggesting rough, stony land, a tough place for a farmer to make a living. “I first saw the word in print a couple of years ago,” Robert Hawkins said. “I was on a plane trip and picked up a copy of LIFE magazine. Reading an article about Lyndon Johnson and the LBJ Ranch, the country around there was called ‘hardscabble land.’ Out of the gray past, without an orgin (sic) which can be definitely cited, the word had been applied as a name to a spot of geography not f