Kentucky is its own brand of south.

It wasn’t the mama and papa thing. I think it was the whole him being smart because “he knows things”.

Rural isolation is made up of equal parts of fear and boredom. It wasn’t cornbread for us. It was potatoes. The animals ate better than us because they were worth money. We weren’t.

I do miss the sense of exploration I had out there. There was always something new to find. I was always looking forward to stomping in the creek or chasing cattle in the fields. My son is three now. I can’t wait to go searching for fossils and finding wild animals with him.

My warped view of the world stems from my experience of rural America that was later replaced by living in the abject poverty of an inner city projects. Both were very similar styles of living. The culture was vastly different though.