Steve-
Thanks for sharing your blog. Your story of your visit to Kentucky was especially touching to me as I am a native of East Tennessee and still live near Knoxville and the Great Smoky Mtns National Park. The people of the Southern Appalachians were like no other. Their spirit still lives but it has been diluted and scattered almost beyond description. They are people of honor and so poor that honor was all they had at times. The end of WW2 saw a mass exodus of Blacks from the cottonfields of the South and the poor Whites from the mountains of the Appalachians. `The latter was the Hillbilly Highway and many tears were shed along it. Grandparents stayed behind as parents headed north taking the children to what was hoped to be a better life in the mills and factories of Chicago and Detroit and the other blue collar meccas. Many are now returning. Older and broken, they seek the soil of their youth one last time. Oh, don't get me started....