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What does a Boone cnty girl say after sex? .... Get off me daddy, your crushing my Marlboros)
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Oh man, that was a stand alone joke for sure, didn't deserve to buried in a post like that.
We got a little town around my parts called Prunedale, which we all call Prunetucky, I can't wait to get to work tommorow.

Mr. Barak - There is a series of books called "Foxfire". Volumes one through twelve or maybe more. These were compiled by high school students over a period of time and cover many aspects of ordinary people and their lives. Written mostly as a series of interviews on many different subjects they are very informative. Don't know if they are still in print or not but if you want I can lend you a copy or two. I believe I have a few of the volumes here at home and they will give you more insight to this way of life short of spending alot of time with mountain folks. PM me if you want to see a copy...

Thanks, Okie (Barak is an Okie, too. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />). That's a kind offer, but we have a bunch of the Foxfire books here at home. I bought them 'way back when, before I had ever met Barak. He may not know that we have them... between the two of us we have a huge number of books... bookshelves all over the house and then some. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

B'sW

Mrs. Barak - You just can't have too many bookshelves <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Excellent post Hound Girl. You know my people well.....

I just so happen to have a Foxfire book, #3 right here at arm's reach.
They were done by Eliot Wigginton in 1966 along with his 9th and 10th grade English classes.
If you want to know the proper way to scrape the tasty bits out of a hog's head, get the Foxfire books!

Just thought this bears repeating. Sums up my feelings pretty well I think.

And also, GREAT post HoundGirl. I can tell you were actually here. Knoxville Zoo?

Barak,

Since the Jesco video made you curious about hill people, I would like to recommend this book to you. It's written by Rick Bragg about his grandfather and it's one of the finest biographies that I've ever read. It's one of those books that you begin reading and can't put down.

The name of the book is "Ava's Man".

Here's an excerpt:

From Chapter One:
The beatin� of Blackie Lee

The foothills of the Appalachians
the 1930s

Ava met him at a box-lunch auction outside Gadsden, Alabama, when she was barely fifteen, when a skinny boy in freshly washed overalls stepped from the crowd of bidders, pointed to her and said, �I got one dollar, by God.� In the evening they danced in the grass to a fiddler and banjo picker, and Ava told all the other girls she was going to marry that boy someday, and she did. But to remind him that he was still hers, after the cotton rows aged her and the babies came, she had to whip a painted woman named Blackie Lee.

Maybe it isn�t quite right to say that she whipped her. To whip somebody, down here, means there was an altercation between two people, and somebody, the one still standing, won. This wasn�t that. This was a beatin�, and it is not a moment that glimmers in family history. But of all the stories I was told of their lives together, this one proves how Ava loved him, and hated him, and which emotion won out in the end.

Charlie Bundrum was what women here used to call a purty man, a man with thick, sandy hair and blue eyes that looked like something you would see on a rich woman�s bracelet. His face was as thin and spare as the rest of him, and he had a high-toned, chin-in-the-air presence like he had money, but he never did. His head had never quite caught up with his ears, which were still too big for most human beings, but the women of his time were not particular as to ears, I suppose.

He was also a man who was not averse to stopping off at the beer joint, now and again, and that was where he encountered a traveling woman with crimson lipstick and silk stockings named Blackie Lee. People called her Blackie because of her coal-black hair, and when she told my granddaddy that she surely was parched and tired and sure would �preciate a place to wash her clothes and rest a spell before she moved on down the road, he told her she was welcome at his house.

They were living in north Georgia at that time, outside Rome. Ava and the five children�there was only James, William, Edna, Juanita and Margaret then�were a few miles away, working in Newt Morrison�s cotton field. Charlie always took in strays�dogs, men and women, who needed a place�but Blackie was a city woman and pretty, too, which set the stage for mayhem.

It all might have gone unnoticed. Blackie Lee might�ve washed her clothes, set a spell and then just moved along, if that was all that she was after. But we�ll never know. We�ll never know because she had the misfortune to hang her stockings on Ava Bundrum�s clothesline in front of God and everybody.

Miles away from there, Ava was hunched over in the cotton field, dragging a heavy sack, her fingers and thumbs on fire from the needle-sharp stickers on the cotton bolls. Newt Morrison�s daughter, Sis, came up alongside of her in the field, one row over, and lit the fuse.

�Ava,� said Sis, who had driven past Ava and Charlie�s house earlier that day, �did you get you some silk stockings?�

Ava said no she had not, what foolishness, and just picked on.

�Well,� Sis said, �is your sister Grace visitin� you?�

No, Ava said, if Grace had come to visit, she would have written or sent word.

�Well,� said Sis, �I drove past y�all�s place and seen some silk stockings on the line, and I thought they must have been Grace�s, �cause she�s the only one I could think of that would have silk stockings.�

Ava said well, maybe it was Grace, and picked on. Grace had wed a rich man and had silk stockings and a good car and may have come by, just on a whim. That must be it. Had to be.

Edna, then only a little girl, said her momma just kept her back bowed and her face down for a few more rows, then jerked bolt upright as if she had been stung by a bee, snatched the cotton sack from her neck and flung it, heavy as it was, across two rows.

Then she just started walking, and the children, puzzled, hurried after her. Even as an old woman Ava could walk most people plumb into the ground, and as a young woman she just lowered her head and swung her arms and kicked up dust as she powered down the dirt road to home.

When she swung into the yard, sometime later, it was almost dark and Blackie Lee was on the porch, cooling herself. Ava stopped and drew a breath and just looked at her for a moment, measuring her for her coffin. Then she stomped over to the woodpile and picked up the ax.

About that time it must have dawned on Blackie Lee who this young woman was, who these big-eyed children were, and she ran inside, put the latch down on the door and began to speak to Jesus.

Ava just stood there, breathing hard, her long hair half in and half out of her dew rag, and announced that the woman could either open the door and take her beatin� or take her beatin� after Ava hacked down her own door. And �you might not want me to walk in thar, with a� ax in my hand.� Blackie Lee, hysterical, unlatched the door and stepped back, and Ava, as she promised, dropped the ax and stepped inside.

She might not have beat the woman quite so bad if it had not been for the dishpan. It had dirty water in it, from that woman�s clothes. No one, no one, washed their clothes in Ava�s dishpan.

Edna stood at the door, peeking.

Listen to her:

�Momma beat her all through the house. She beat her out onto the porch, beat her out into the yard and beat her down to the road, beat her so hard that her hands swelled up so big she couldn�t fit �em in her apron pocket. Then she grabbed aholt of her with one hand and used the other hand to flag down a car that was comin�, and she jerked open that car door and flung that woman in and told the man drivin� that car to get her �on outta here.� And that man said, �Yes, ma�am,� and drove off with Blackie Lee.�

Please read these on line reviews of the book, Ava's Man, also, Barak.

http://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm?book_number=868

Charlie Bundrum was a roofer, a carpenter, a whiskey-maker, a fisherman who knew every inch of the Coosa River, made boats out of car hoods and knew how to pack a wound with brown sugar to stop the blood. He could not read, but he asked his wife, Ava, to read him the paper every day so he would not be ignorant. He was a man who took giant steps in rundown boots, a true hero whom history would otherwise have beem overlooked.

In the decade of the Great Depression, Charlie moved his family twenty-one times, keeping seven children one step ahead of the poverty and starvation that threatened them from every side. He worked at the steel mill when the steel was rolling, or for a side of bacon or a bushel of peaches when it wasn�t. He paid the doctor who delivered his fourth daughter, Margaret -- Bragg�s mother -- with a jar of whiskey. He understood the finer points of the law as it applied to poor people and drinking men; he was a banjo player and a buck dancer who worked off fines when life got a little sideways, and he sang when he was drunk, where other men fought or cussed. He had a talent for living.

His children revered him. When he died, cars lined the blacktop for more than a mile.

Rick Bragg has built a soaring monument to the grandfather he never knew -- a father who stood by his family in hard times and left a backwoods legend behind -- in a book that blazes with his love for his family, and for a particular stretch of dirt road along the Alabama-Georgia border. A powerfully intimate piece of American history as it was experienced by the working people of the Deep South, a glorious record of a life of character, tenacity and indomitable joy and an unforgettable tribute to a vanishing culture, Ava�s Man is Rick Bragg at his stunning best.

http://www.bookbrowse.com/reader_reviews/index.cfm?book_number=868

I especially liked this one:

Rated 5 of 5 by Beau Allen Pacheco
First, I bought the book on tape, and started listening to it in my car on my way back home to Tennessee from California. By the time I got to Colorado, Mr. Bragg's book had recalled the South so sweetly, so honestly, that I became urgently homesick for the South, and drove nonstop across the country to get back home. Then I read the book, and was enchanted all over again. As I reader I was enthralled, as a writer I was humbled.

If anyone west of the Mississippi or North of the Mason Dixon wants to know what the South is all about, they must read Ava's Man. It depicts the honesty, the turmoil and the struggle of the deep South during the depression in a way that no real American can resist. There are heroes here.
Beau Allen Pacheco
Editor-In-Chief
Cycle World's Motorcycle Travel & Adventure

Okay, I'm sure some folks are gonna whup me for this, but what the heck.

I grew up in the South - Florida specifically but when Florida was still mostly Southern. My family, all 8 aunts and uncles and dozens of cousins are from North Carolina. Spent my summers in North Carolina (Rougemont and Efland), North Georgia (Rabun County) or Alabama (Skippyville, down the road from Clopton). All my friends were from Georgia or Alabama. I slept with a 3X5 foot Stars and Bars over my bed for the first 17 years of life. I lived my life based on the irrefutable truth that there ain't a Damnyankee alive that's fit to lick the mud off of Robert E. Lee's boots. (BTW, Damnyankee is properly spelled as one word.)

Then I lived in Germany and with my high school German got to talk to a few locals in small towns in Bavaria, lived in a small town in upstate New York for a couple of years, a small town in Utah and a small town in Idaho. The Mormons in Logan reminded me more of Southerners than anything else. Close knit, suspicious of strangers, but when they warm up to you just as nice and sure friends as you'd ever want.

My two best friends in the Army were from farms in Louisiana and Maine respectively. Except for wildly disparate accents they could have been two peas from the same pod.

It finally dawned on me that country folks are country folks the world over.

So if I have any advice for my late Southern brethren it is this: Guys, "that war" has been over for 141 years. In the intervening years boys from all over this country - North , South, East and West - have worn the same color uniform and fought and died under the same flag in seven major conflicts and numerous smaller ones. Yet an entire culture is still obsessed with that one war, an entire group of people still harbor ill will toward "Yankees". Nowhere in my travels outside the South have I heard a general disgust for "those damn Rebels". Nobody else cares.

We're all Americans, so just let it go.

Well,...... I dunno,...do I have to start liking people from Michigan?

You're right Jim, this isn't the Yankees vs. the South... It's the ill-informed bigoted azzholes who think "typical" Appalachians are drug abusing, wife beating morons vs the South (more specifically Appalachia).

Glad you could find the real wrong in this thread. I appologize to Yankees everywhere for implying that Barak is one of you...

Amen! As someone whose family moved on the average every two years as I was growing up, I second that... although I'd leave the word "country" out of it for myself. I've lived all over the U.S. (including Georgia).

Barak, being a country boy himself, was (I'm sure) interested in similarities and differences between Oklahomans and Kentuckians. Maybe it's the fact that he's married to this foreign language teacher that's made him begin being interested in other peoples and other cultures. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

B'sW

Are you from Ohio, by any chance? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

B'sW

B'sW (with thanks to JScottRupp <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />)

I find the banter back and forth about a comment concerning a some what radical individual that is a citizen of West Virginia amusing. West Virginia is considered to be a southern state by seemingly most of those from north of us and a northern state by many south of us. When looking back to the Civil War we were on both sides during that conflict. There are National Guard units from this state that have battle ribbons from both sides. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" /> West Virginia is the only state formed by spliting a state that had been granted statehood.

Yeah, that's it.....

Probably his best move, that stance.

Sometimes, when you insult someone, you get called on it...no matter how high a horse you think you're sitting astride...

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> +1 for David...

Kentucky, actually,...

One of those who remained instead of taking Route 23 after reading and writing,....

They learned readin', rightin', Route 23
To the jobs that lay waiting in those cities' factories
They didn't know that old highway
Could lead them to a world of misery

Have you ever been down Kentucky-way
Say south of Prestonburg
Have you ever been up in a holler
Have you ever heard
A mountain man cough his life away
From diggin' that black coal in those dark mines, those dark mines
If you had you might just understand
The reason that they left is all behind

They learned readin', rightin', Route 23
To the jobs that lay waiting in those cities' factories
They learned readin', rightin', roads to the north
To the luxury and comfort a coal line can't afford
They thought readin', rightin', Route 23
Would take them to the good life that they had never seen
They didn't know that old highway
Could lead them to a world of misery

Have you ever seen 'em put the kids in the car after work on Friday night
Pull up in a holler about 2 a.m. and see a light still shinin' bright
Those mountain folks sat up that late
Just to hold those little grandkids in their arms, in their arms
And I'm proud to say that I've been blessed
And touched by their sweet hillbilly charm

They learned readin', rightin', Route 23
To the jobs that lay waiting in those cities' factories
They learned readin', rightin', roads to the north
To the luxury and comfort a coal line can't afford
They thought readin', rightin', Route 23
Would take them to the good life that they had never seen
They didn't know that old highway
Could lead them to a world of misery
Yeah, it turns out that that old highway, leads you to a world of misery

Dwight Yoakam--Readin', Writin', Route 23