Hamer told a vivid story from his rural Baptist boyhood. His grandmother, who babysat him and his five siblings, lived in constant fear of escaped inmates — 'trusties' — from the nearby Osborne State Prison Farm. One night, when clattering noises and a flashlight beam confirmed her worst fears, she herded the children into the bathtub and sent the eldest boy out with their father's rifle. The intruder turned out to be their cousin Jerry playing a prank. Years later, the prison farm was closed and converted into a retirement home — and eventually, his grandmother became a resident there. She had literally become a 'trustee' herself. Hamer offered this as an allegory with deliberate 'creative ambiguity,' noting that Park Tudor had been the bathtub where students huddled safely together, and now he was pushing them out into the world, armed not with a rifle but with the literary canon.