I understand 4ager.
If one has never been to this part of the country then they wouldn't understand it's allure. These hills and hollars become a part of you. Even though the area that I reside in has changed drastically due to two major universities[Va Tech & Radford U] with a combined 40K students, I'm still just ten to fifteen minutes drive from true hillbilly land in most any direction. When I head north into WV[half hours drive mostly due to winding roads] I see the devastation that the EPA has wreaked. It's hard to believe that poverty exists at that level that close. It's a totally different world yet when you look past the shanties where many of the [mostly former] coal miners live it is still beautiful country.
I guess that I am saying I couldn't image living anywhere else, ever.
