We Saved Ourselves, Kinda

These tales from the Cumberland Plateau are a work of fiction based on the author’s childhood memories. They will bring a chuckle and maybe a tear.

Get ready to decipher the strange vocabulary of the mountain folk. Ponder historical facts and discover the blue-skinned people living on Troublesome Creek. Reflect upon the pain when young men left the mountains to serve their country in a distant land. Contemplate the impact when seven million people chose to leave small communities in the Appalachian region and migrate to cities, where they worked in factories and rented rundown row houses that lacked both a yard and a front porch, two cherished elements of their tradition. And consider how, through tough times, they managed to save themselves, kinda.

We Saved Ourselves, Kinda is a series of interwoven stories revealing what life was like in the Appalachian region of Eastern Kentucky during the fifties and early sixties. Though the customs of the highlanders were sometimes unorthodox, and oftentimes the outcomes lacked the ideal results, they prized their independence. To capitulate to government assistance could relinquish a cherished freedom, a freedom they guarded with suspicion and aloofness.