There used to be two movie theaters here — a regular cinema and a drive-in. Both are long gone. The nearest Walmart is nearly an hour away. There’s no bookstore, the nearest Barnes & Noble being 55 miles away and the main source of reading matter being the horrifying/hilarious crime blotter in the local weekly newspaper. Within living memory, this town had three grocery stores, a Western Auto and a Napa Auto Parts, a feed store, a lumber store, a clothing shop, a Chrysler dealership, a used-car dealership, a skating rink — even a discotheque, back in the 1970s. Today there is one grocery store, and the rest is as dead as disco. If you want a newsstand or a dinner at Applebee’s, gas up the car. Amazon may help, but delivery can be tricky — the nearest UPS drop-box is 17 miles away, the nearest FedEx office 34 miles away.
If you go looking for the catastrophe that laid this area low, you’ll eventually discover a terrifying story: Nothing happened. It’s not like this was a company town in which the business around which life was organized went toes-up. Booneville and Owsley County were never economic powerhouses. They were sustained for a time in part by a nearby Midsouth plant, which manufactured consumer electronics such as steam irons and toaster ovens, as well as industrial supplies such as refrigerator parts. A former employee estimates that a majority of Owsley County households owed part of their income to Midsouth at one time or another, until a mishap in the sanding room put an end to that: “Those shavings are just like coal dust,” he says. “It will go right up if it gets a spark.” Operations were consolidated in a different facility, a familiar refrain here — a local branch of the health department
I saw this a few days ago at amren. The most interesting part to me was that the overall crime is 2/3 the national average and violent crime is half, makes you question the old “poverty causes crime” canard.
The other thing that’s interesting are the stats on marriage and abortion.
I think these are a different kind of poor people. They are rural and i imagine have gardens and livestock in addition to hunting and fishing. Despite what the author says about there being “no fiercely independent remnants of the old America clinging to their homes and their traditional ways”, I think there is some of this, check the land deeds and I bet you’ll find these families go way back. We have always had the lower class, backwoods hillbillies in the South. I think these people don’t leave because they don’t want to, they don’t want anything much.
Unrelated, bit I noticed you changed the thingy at the top. It used to say “Gray State,Gray Man” and now it says”…but not a gray man”. What is the significance?
A gray man works in the shadows to bring about change. I don’t need any recognition but I will not hide in the shadows to fight against evil.
Your points above were the same topic of discussion as my wife and I had last night concerning this story. I believe your points are correct. Our church in Murphy as about 15 people in attendance. No audio/visual equipment but good sermons from a pastor who also works 28 hours a week at a regular job. Good, self-sufficient, God fearing people who understand life better than most people. Poor in monetary measures does not mean poor in humanity and morality.
I like a preacher who works, keeps ’em grounded.
This reminded me of this old article from 2012 about the USDA working to overcome people’s self sufficiency:
The Ashe County Department of Social Services in Jefferson, N.C., for example, received a “Gold” award for confronting “mountain pride” and increasing food stamp participation by 10 percent.
“Hearing from the outreach worker that benefits could be used to purchase seeds and plants for their gardens turned out to be a very important strategy in counteracting what they described as ‘mountain pride’ and appealed to those who wished not to rely on others,” the document explains. “Eventually, many accepted assistance from the Low Income Energy Assistance Program, the Qualified Medicare Beneficiary program, and others, in some cases doubling a household’s net income. In 1 year, SNAP participation increased over 10 percent.”
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/07/03/usda-combats-mountain-pride-self-reliance-to-boost-food-stamp-rolls/#ixzz2qto4aYlQ
No man is more enslaved than the one who thinks he is free.