BORN IN THESE HILLS
taken away when I was three.
Son of a coal miner who took
my mother, my brother, and me.
Drove west to the ocean, Pacific.
The kids there called me “hillbilly” and “hick.”
Said I talked funny. Punched me, kicked me,
generally tried their best to make sure
I knew I didn’t belong there.
And I did not.
Eventually, though,
I learned to speak like them,
dress like them, act as if I was not
from Kentucky, my daddy
was not Appalachian, that
these mountains had no part of me.
My only recourse was
after the pledge of allegiance…
I never sang the “Oregon” song.
I sang, “Kentucky.”
But, my father, he wouldn’t change.
He was proud of his heritage.
He played banjo; he played mandolin;
he went fishing, a lot.
Grew the best garden in the county,
ate soup beans and cornbread.
He did not give a hang for their Yankee ways.
I hated him. I hated my father.
until I returned to these hills.
Now I see them,
I see him,
in me.
[…] his recovery only by the goodhearted charity of relatives and neighbors. And when he recovered, Dad loaded us up in an Oldsmobile and drove west until he was stopped by the Pacific […]