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I’d rather die amongst my family and friends than run away from the city I was born in to play with an old Ford tractor.

My wife grew up in McCreary County, KY. It's just down on the KY/TN border.

It took the better part of a decade for me to start fitting in. I had the wrong last name (it was furn sounding) I had the wrong accent. I was the wrong religion (Methodist was not Protestant enough). It took the passing of my Mother in Law to really get them to realize I was an alright kind of guy. Taking care of her at the end showed them I was of the right stuff.

The Big South Fork Region is one of those places where you can go in pretty easy, but getting out is the problem. You have to have everything in one sock before you open your mouth. It is the last place I would want to bluster into. However, with the proper attitude and the proper family connections, it is the safest place in the world that I have found.

The county where my farm is on the other end of the Commonwealth. It is cosmopolitan compared to KYHillChick's home. However, it has somewhat the same vibe about what it does with its strangers. There are a small number of surnames scattered all over the county. The funny last name thing is not a problem, because Germans settled there in the mid 19th century and my surname is therefore not suspect. Still, it's only been in the past 5 years that I have started to actually mingle with the locals. I finally found a friend that took me around and introduced me. I stopped being regarded as an outsider and my farm stopped being referred to as The Old Ramsey place and instead started being associated with my name. This all took about 20 years.

Somebody once asked how I could feel safe, being so close to Cincinnati. My response went something like "You know when you've got a big ol' fish tank, there's always one big fish that never comes out during the day. However, if you put in new fish, you'll turn off the lights and there'll be no new fish by morning. That's kinda how it is with my neighbors. It's 63 miles from Fountain Square, and by the time you get out my way, it's one little house back a long driveway after another. Inside that house lives a big fish that you never see.

"I live at the end of a 2-mile road, and it's two miles more to the state route, and then 3 more miles to the next, and so on. There are little houses all along the way, and you have to pass all those big fish before you get to my place. You'll never make the whole trip in a day, and after nightfall, you're going to meet the big fish and see what I mean."




This is kind of stuff my neighbors are made of. I don't have any worries.