We’re on the Front Porch: Moonshine Stories, Mama’s Bingo & Queer Hillfolk Confessions
We tell queer hill-folk histories from the front porch, laying out how growing up in Jellico and Portsmouth shaped who we are and how we love, work, and survive. I talk about the moonshine and bootleggers my family knew, the Big Bertha grocery runs and hoarding underwear and shoes because you never know, and we laugh about ramen abominations and bacon-grease cornbread bowls while admitting some things are darker — addiction, funerals, and folks we couldn’t save. We trade pappy stories and recipes (poke salad, fried groundhog, chili with peanut butter) and gripe about the weirdness of moving someplace with pawn shops missing and Waffle Houses scarce. We get real about Melungeon roots, company-town histories, and how being queer in a place people don’t leave feels both lonely and defiant. We gripe at the folks who cosplay redneck while forgetting the union-busting, working-class backbone of the term, and we confess how leaving changed our politics, our families, and our survival strategies. Pull up a chair, grab whatever’s left in the pantry, and listen — we’re telling secrets you probably ain’t heard, with the kind of humor and honesty only two hill kids could manage.
Dash and Beck, (who forgot to introduce themselves in this first episode) the experiences of growing up in a redneck culture, focusing on themes of poverty, resourcefulness, and family dynamics. The speakers share personal stories about their childhoods, including memories of moonshine, food traditions, and the impact of socioeconomic status on their lives. They also delve into cultural identity, particularly the Melungeon heritage, and reflect on the intersection of politics and personal experiences. The discussion highlights the complexities of navigating relationships within families that have differing expectations and values, as well as the lasting effects of trauma and health issues in their communities.
Some highlights:
The conversation highlights the unique setup of a redneck podcast.
Childhood experiences shape perspectives on material scarcity.
Resourcefulness is a key theme in navigating poverty.
Growing up in a food desert impacts adult life.
Family stories about moonshine reveal cultural heritage.
The Melungeon identity is explored in depth.
Expectations from family can create tension and conflict.
Food traditions play a significant role in family dynamics.
Health issues and trauma are common in these narratives.
The intersection of culture and politics is complex and nuanced.
Chapter timestamps:
00:00 Setting the Scene: Podcast Setup and Personal Spaces
00:19 Reflections on Childhood and Material Security
00:39 Navigating Poverty: Micro Economies and Resourcefulness
01:13 Cultural Connections: Food, Family, and Community
01:39 Queer Histories: Identity and Growing Up in Appalachia
02:27 The Impact of Industry: Work and Economic Opportunities
03:10 Health and Welfare: Navigating Medical Needs
04:13 Food Traditions: Appalachian Cuisine and Family Recipes
05:45 Euphemisms and Regional Dialects
06:23 Food Memories and Family Recipes
07:23 Childhood Independence and Self-Sufficiency
09:04 Family Dynamics and Substance Abuse
09:23 Breaking the Cycle of Poverty
10:36 Redneck Identity and Cultural Misunderstandings
12:20 Ancestry and Family Histories
Takeaways:
- We share how growing up poor in the holler taught me to hoard shoes, stretch groceries, and hustle cigarette sales to make ends meet.
- I tell stories about family moonshiners, bootleggers, and backyard economies that shaped our queer Appalachian identities and survival instincts.
- We wrestle with trauma, addiction, and loss — how alcoholism, opioids, and hopelessness devastated peers and relatives in my hometown.
- I explain feeling out of place after leaving Jellicoe: the awkwardness of being queer, pursuing education, and distancing from family expectations.
- We compare rural resourcefulness to city safety nets, noting my survival skills don't translate where healthcare and pawn shops operate differently.
- I talk ancestry and Melungeon heritage, explaining complex mixed roots and how history and secrecy shaped our community's identity.
- We laugh about odd foods, cooking hacks, and weird hillbilly meals — but admit they reveal resilience, creativity, and sometimes, embarrassment.
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- JCPenney
- Ace Hardware
- Black & Decker
- Walmart
- Family Dollar
- Dollar General
- Waffle House
- Taco Bell
- Wendy's
- Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC)
- Giovanni's Pizza
- Jim Dandy
- Domino's
- Castleberry's
- Chipotle (Chipotle Mexican Grill)
- Mountain Dew
- Pepsi
- Coca-Cola
- Pantene
- Marlboro
- Ancestry.com
- NASCAR
queer Appalachia, rural LGBTQ stories, Appalachian queer podcast, hill folk histories, moonshine stories, bootleggers and moonshine, Melungeon ancestry, Appalachian genealogy, Appalachian food traditions, poke salad recipes, rural poverty Appalachia, company town history, coal mining communities, redneck culture stereotypes, rural healthcare access, opioid epidemic Appalachia, Pentecostal church stories, oral histories podcast, queer rural experiences, Appalachian family stories
Transcript
All right, you are hanging out with queer next.
Speaker A:Listening to queer histories of a couple of hill folk.
Speaker A:We're here to tell you some secrets.
Speaker A:It may not be secrets, but it'd probably be stuff you ain't heard.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:I got kind of a redneck podcast set up, to be honest.
Speaker A:I've got, like, some lamps clipped to the side of the table, and I don't have a stand for the mic, so it's just, like, sitting on the desk in front of me.
Speaker B:I've got a table from Mom's house that I use as my everyday table.
Speaker B:I keep all my shit on it.
Speaker B:I have my bookcase here.
Speaker B:I have a whole lighting set up, but we don't need to worry about that.
Speaker B:You don't need to light me.
Speaker A:Yeah, I don't have anything.
Speaker A:Like, all my books are in the floor behind me here.
Speaker B:Most of my books are still in storage because we knew we were only going to be here for a year, so we really didn't unpack that much.
Speaker A:Is that some sort of.
Speaker A:Because I'm.
Speaker A:No matter how long I'm going to stay somewhere, I don't unpack.
Speaker A:Like, I don't know if that's, like, some homeless fear, like this trauma of, like, I'm always afraid that I'm gonna lose my house, even though it's probably not gonna happen.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:But I still live like that.
Speaker B:I guess I worry about being able to feed us.
Speaker B:That's my big worry.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And having things like, we have more underwear than God could give, Because, you know, that's just stuff you didn't have when we were kids.
Speaker A:You know how many pairs of shoes I've got?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Because we.
Speaker A:When we were kids, we grow out of them.
Speaker A:Like, I. I grew like, a weed.
Speaker A:And we got all our shoes at the yard sales.
Speaker A:And so, like, there's, like, one brief window of time where whatever pair you have fits you.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And then that goes by pretty fast or they wear out.
Speaker A:So now I just, like, hoard shoes.
Speaker B:My mom would take me shopping.
Speaker B:We'd go to Columbus because it was the closest big city.
Speaker B:So we would go to the JCPenney outlet, and on the way there, we would stop at a video poker machine and.
Speaker B:And mom would play for a couple of hours, and then we'd go to JCPenney.
Speaker B:And then on the way back, we'd stop at the horse track and she would play the horses.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So gambling was a big part.
Speaker B:There were many times we had no money, and Mom.
Speaker B:My dad would send my mom to bingo.
Speaker B:And she'd come home with a couple hundred dollars, you know.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It was, they played the lottery like it was their 401k.
Speaker A:I almost thought about playing the lottery the other day.
Speaker A:I've never had that impulse once in my life.
Speaker B:We go to Big Go pretty regularly.
Speaker B:That just started a couple of months ago.
Speaker B:It just makes me feel close to mom.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:The further away I live, the more I'm like noticing the things I miss.
Speaker A:So they don't have pawn shops here.
Speaker A:I've never lived anywhere that doesn't have poverty before.
Speaker A:And so I can't function here because all of the things that we built to make up for the stuff that wasn't available.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Those micro economies, nobody trades for shit here.
Speaker A:If people need to get rid of something, they try to sell it to you and it's like okay.
Speaker A:Like they will try to squeeze five bucks out of a piece of garbage.
Speaker B:I just had to deal with a bunch of redneck men selling all my dad's stuff.
Speaker B:So negotiating prices on with them on like boats and tow trucks and all kinds of.
Speaker A:But like I need and I'm trying to ask folks like where do you get your tools?
Speaker A:You telling me just go to Ace Hardware and pay full price for new.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:I need a pawn shop that I can walk into and get a five dollar twenty year old Black and Decker that I can abuse until it flies apart in my hands.
Speaker A:And they don't do that here.
Speaker B:But are they, are they illegal or they just don't have em.
Speaker B:Cause they don't have that kind of issue.
Speaker A:They, nobody's hungry, nobody worries about losing their house.
Speaker A:It is bizarre.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:And thing.
Speaker A:And it's not like stuff is cheaper and it's not like anybody makes a shitload of money.
Speaker A:You know what it is is they have, they have socialized state backed healthcare safety nets.
Speaker A:Safety nets right Back home everybody goes broke on healthcare until they die of whatever.
Speaker A:The last thing they couldn't afford was here.
Speaker A:Man, I'm spoiled.
Speaker A:It's just the shit you need falls from the heavens here.
Speaker A:And it's so like I arranged my, my problem solving skills.
Speaker A:They just don't apply here.
Speaker A:So it's, it's weird to get used to.
Speaker A:But growing up, you know like there was a Walmart in Kentucky in Tennessee and there still is not, there still ain't nothing where I grew up.
Speaker A:But mom and dad, you know they both worked multiple jobs and so.
Speaker A:And then like once, once a month we went grocery shopping for five people and three rapidly growing fucking corn pone redneck children.
Speaker A:I remember like the first of the month, we get our food stamps and they'd load us all up into my dad's van, Big Bertha, which was this cargo van, and we would drive it up to Kentucky and spend hours.
Speaker A:Each of us would get our own shopping cart and fill it with everything.
Speaker A:We each had a list we had to get.
Speaker A:I loathe grocery shopping to this day.
Speaker A:I won't do it.
Speaker B:I won't either.
Speaker A:It sucks.
Speaker A:And then you gotta only do pickup.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And then we get home and you gotta fucking load it all in a trailer that the five of you barely fit in.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Much less the month supply of shit you just bought.
Speaker A:And then you gotta make it last a month.
Speaker A:I mean, just our whole lives revolved around the logistics of procuring food and resources.
Speaker A:And now it's even.
Speaker A:You would think that I would feel good, that it's easier now, but I don't know what to do with myself.
Speaker A:I don't know how to function.
Speaker B:Yeah, no, I get it.
Speaker B:I want to give all my money away.
Speaker B:Like find myself donating to like, different causes and pet shelters and, you know, I have like $10 to spare.
Speaker B:And I'm like, who can I give this to?
Speaker B:And I. I don't think people that grew up with money have that same kind of, you know, urge.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A:And like, you know, if you need to downsize or something, like there's this serve that everybody at the university uses, even retired people are on it.
Speaker A:And if they need to get rid of something, they, they'll send a message out and they'll be like, I'm selling this or whatever, and it'll be some horseshit.
Speaker A:But it's still like, you, you can't.
Speaker A:If I need something, I'm.
Speaker A:I'm.
Speaker A:I'm not going to sit around and wait until somebody happens to send it through this listserv.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:And so for them, that's a luxury.
Speaker A:They're like, oh, interesting.
Speaker A:I always wanted one of those.
Speaker A:And for me, I'm like, where do I get a $5 drill?
Speaker B:Yard sales.
Speaker A:They do have those here.
Speaker A:They have garage sales here.
Speaker A:They've been having them lately.
Speaker A:So I've picked up some stuff there.
Speaker A:It's mostly the people that have them is the old folks who are going into homes.
Speaker A:So I've gotten all my furnit way.
Speaker A:What's today's topic?
Speaker B:The first thing that popped into my mind was the story that my grandpa told me about running moonshine.
Speaker A:We going straight to pappy stories.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:The first thing that popped into my mind because you brought him up, my grandfather, my papa, he was such a character.
Speaker B:He was one of the kindest men I have ever known.
Speaker B:It was my adopted grandfather.
Speaker B:He told me a story one time when he was born in the 20s, so in the 30s.
Speaker B:He was, you know, around a teenager when there was prohibition and all that kind of stuff going on.
Speaker B:And they were making moonshine and one of the stills up on the hill, and he said it was.
Speaker B:It was at night, and he went running because he was trying to tell them all that the revenuers were coming, right?
Speaker B:So he ran and the cop finally caught him.
Speaker B:And he said that he was in.
Speaker B:Sitting in the cop car and he was just shaking.
Speaker B:And the cop was like, what's the matter with you, boy?
Speaker B:And he's like, I'm cold.
Speaker B:And the cop was like, it's the middle of July.
Speaker A:Nothing to say here.
Speaker A:Did you have bootleggers where you grew up?
Speaker B:Did I have what?
Speaker A:Bootleggers.
Speaker B:Oh, yeah.
Speaker A:Was it a dry county?
Speaker B:No, but the township that I was in was dry.
Speaker B:You had to go across the river to get.
Speaker B:You had to go into Lucasville to get liquor.
Speaker A:Did they have one of those systems, like, you drive up and, like, flick your lights and.
Speaker B:I never.
Speaker B:All of the moonshine that I have had has been given to me without asking because I'm not a big drinker.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Yeah, there was a lot of alcoholism in my family, so I'm not a big drinker.
Speaker B:But all of the moonshine that I have been given has been basically against my will.
Speaker B:When I first moved to.
Speaker B:I think I gave you a pint of the apple pie moonshine, didn't I?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Delicious.
Speaker B:From one of my cousins.
Speaker B:I still know people who are making moonshine.
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker B:It's been going on.
Speaker B:It's never been.
Speaker B:Not happening up that hill.
Speaker A:My aunt makes it.
Speaker A:Well, she did.
Speaker A:Last time I talked to her, we had bootleggers for, like.
Speaker A:That's where you had to get beer.
Speaker A:And so when we were in high school, we would drive up to the bootleggers and, like, there was a whole complicated system with ATVs going up the hill and stuff.
Speaker B:Well, you could get liquor and stuff in Portsmouth.
Speaker B:The state liquor store was there.
Speaker B:So you could get anything like that, you know, could get beer in Lucasville on the other side of the river, but on my.
Speaker B:On the north.
Speaker B:So there's the valley side of the river and the northwest side of the river.
Speaker B:I went to school on the valley side of the river.
Speaker B:But lived on the northwest side of the river.
Speaker B:And over in valley you could get beer and stuff like that.
Speaker B:But over in Morgan Township they.
Speaker B:It was dry.
Speaker A:Yeah, it was dry for all the counties around.
Speaker A:So it was like the whole tri county area.
Speaker A:And like you could go down to Tennessee, people would go down to Jellicoe to get beer.
Speaker A:But you couldn't get liquor there.
Speaker A:You couldn't get anything harder than malt liquor down in Jellicoe.
Speaker B:Yeah, it was just moonshine around me and a lot of those moonshiners moved into weed in the later years.
Speaker B:There's a lot of weed up Big Run.
Speaker A:The entrepreneurial spirit.
Speaker B:Yeah, well there's not a.
Speaker B:There's not a stitch of flat land all the way up that holler.
Speaker B:So they grow it on the side of the hill and do all that kind of stuff.
Speaker A:Ditch weed.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's big around a seven miles long and there's a lot that happens on it.
Speaker B:If you go all the way out, all the way out.
Speaker B:Big run on the other side of it.
Speaker B:There's a family dollar out there because there are family dollars and dollar generals everywhere out there.
Speaker A:Like a family dollar or just the dollar store family.
Speaker A:I think they're all the same company anyway probably.
Speaker A:And Waffle House basically holds central Appalachia together.
Speaker B:There's no Waffle House in Soda county here.
Speaker A:Anywhere near there actually Wasn't where I grew up.
Speaker A:Well, there wasn't restaurants, it wasn't stores.
Speaker B:I mean just got a Taco Bell.
Speaker B:Like the day we moved out they opened their.
Speaker B:And before that all we had was a Wendy's.
Speaker B:And that was still big.
Speaker B:Pretty fancy for Lucasville.
Speaker A:There was a Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Speaker A:What was like your family's indulgence?
Speaker A:Like not.
Speaker A:I mean like the kind of.
Speaker B:So much fast food.
Speaker A:Like real fast food omnivores or was there one in particular?
Speaker B:So mom and my mom and dad both worked a lot and Giovanni's Pizza.
Speaker B:You've heard me talk about that a lot, right?
Speaker B:That was a big one.
Speaker B:And then there was this place called Jim Dandy where you could get a Big Mo and a Coke for 99 cents and we'd have them deliver like 20 Big Mo's and Cokes to our house mom.
Speaker B:My mom grew up fairly poor and her mom always bought I don't know what the equivalent of generic was back in the 50s and 60s.
Speaker A:Store brand.
Speaker B:Yeah, my mom refused to buy the store brand of anything.
Speaker B:She bought name brand everything even when we couldn't afford it.
Speaker A:Where I lived there wasn't Fast food.
Speaker A:And it was a.
Speaker A:It was like a food desert in every way.
Speaker A:There wasn't a.
Speaker A:A grocery store or fast food, but we could drive into Kentucky and get something.
Speaker A:In my trailer park, there was a competition.
Speaker A:Like, you were.
Speaker A:You were high $.
Speaker A:If you could get off a hill.
Speaker A:Like, you were like king of the trailer park if you were not on assistance that month.
Speaker B:Yeah, I felt pretty proud when I was able to call the welfare office and tell them to turn mine off.
Speaker A:Yeah, I don't know what.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's just like.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's a little bit of that bootstrap thing, but it.
Speaker A:There's also just nothing wrong with feeling like you've accomplished something.
Speaker B:Yeah, I didn't until I got this job.
Speaker B:Being an adjunct, you have to be on welfare.
Speaker B:You have to be on Medicaid.
Speaker B:I take 16 different medications, dude.
Speaker B:My insulin alone is like 90 bucks, you know, and I. I just don't have that to shell out all the time.
Speaker B:Time.
Speaker B:16, You know, and it's a lot.
Speaker B:But yeah, I. I totally get it.
Speaker B:Having insurance.
Speaker B:And I was very proud to.
Speaker B:I don't think we were on welfare when I was a kid.
Speaker B:We didn't have insurance, but it wasn't required back then.
Speaker B:I had insurance through my biological father.
Speaker B:And he was an iron.
Speaker B:He was a union iron worker.
Speaker A:We didn't have a doctor.
Speaker A:There was a place we would drive to down the holler called Wynn Hammersham that.
Speaker A:It was a. I believe he was a physician's assistant.
Speaker A:And he had somebody's pad.
Speaker A:We never saw whoever name was on the pad, this.
Speaker A:Whoever this doctor was.
Speaker A:But he was pretty good.
Speaker A:Like, he could.
Speaker A:You know, if we were sick, we could go down there.
Speaker A:And there was some people in there who could draw blood and stuff, but, like, you know, we didn't die.
Speaker B:Lucasville is one of those small towns that had a pharmacy that your papa could go in and come out with antibiotics, you know, for the dog.
Speaker B:They would just say they were for the dog, but you could get whatever you needed.
Speaker B:Lucasville was one of those small towns.
Speaker B:My grandma won the countywide Christmas decorating contest a couple of times when we were moving.
Speaker B:When we were going through all the stuff, I found they copied.
Speaker B:They did a Xerox copy of the check that she got one time.
Speaker B:So I got to see that where she was from the radio station.
Speaker B:They sponsored the contest.
Speaker B:It was cool.
Speaker A:Well, we called this show Queer Nicks.
Speaker A:I mean, I just sort of said that as a. I'm a fan of a Portmanteau.
Speaker A:It's just sort of part of my brand of humor.
Speaker A:But, you know, I like.
Speaker A:People don't leave.
Speaker A:Where I'm from, people don't leave.
Speaker A:Jellicoe, me and my.
Speaker A:My siblings and my cousins, we're the first generation of people who left mine.
Speaker B:You either get out young or you stay there forever.
Speaker B:There's no.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And so I never meet other people like me in general.
Speaker A:But if I do, on the rare occasion that I do, they did not grow up queer.
Speaker A:Where did people work?
Speaker A:Like, where was the big employer at the hospital?
Speaker B:The prison?
Speaker B:There isn't a lot of factory works.
Speaker B:There was a big shoelace factory, but it's down to like 20 employees.
Speaker A:That was like.
Speaker A:That's like industry.
Speaker A:Like, y' all had stuff.
Speaker B:Steel mills.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker B:There's still steel mills.
Speaker B:Steel mills there.
Speaker B:Now we're.
Speaker B:We're right on the cusp of coal, too, like an hour from us.
Speaker B:There's coal miners everywhere.
Speaker B:But they.
Speaker B:That's not something that has extended down into southern Ohio yet.
Speaker B:I don't know if it's just not there, but in West Virginia, you can.
Speaker B:There's, you know.
Speaker B:You know, there's all kinds of coal there.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's the only work we.
Speaker A:That Jellicoe had was the mine.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So that's what my dad did for the longest time.
Speaker B:A lot of truck drivers, that kind of thing.
Speaker A:My Uncle Steve became one later, but that's only because my dad's parents were actually kind of rich because they own the mine, because you had to have money to be a truck driver.
Speaker A:But, yeah, dad worked in the mine for a long time, and then he just joined the army.
Speaker A:And then after he come out of the army, was in the National Guard for a while, and then he went to work for the railroad as a brakeman.
Speaker B:That's another big one.
Speaker B:I know a lot of people that work for the railroad.
Speaker B:A lot of manual labor kind of stuff.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah, that's the only.
Speaker B:And if you go down there now, I mean, you can work at the hospital.
Speaker B:You're lucky if you can get a job at the university.
Speaker B:But it's so small.
Speaker B:You know what I mean?
Speaker B:They need adjuncts like crazy because they're paying like $125 a week a month per class.
Speaker B:It's ridiculous how low they pay their adjuncts.
Speaker B:I was teaching three classes and making like 450amonth, and that was it.
Speaker B:Grading English and that kind of thing.
Speaker B:Anyway, there's the hospital.
Speaker B:There's a lot of fast food there's more pizza places than anything in there.
Speaker B:Do you know who Jamie Oliver is?
Speaker B:That chef?
Speaker B:He came into Huntington.
Speaker B:Huntington, Virginia.
Speaker A:I remember that.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And that.
Speaker B:That's our.
Speaker B:It was the fattest city in America.
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker B:You know what I mean?
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker B:That's the kind of place that I'm from.
Speaker A:Damn.
Speaker A:Mine was one of the skinniest.
Speaker B:Yeah, mine's one of the fattest.
Speaker B:But there's more fast food and there's.
Speaker B:You know what I mean, that kind of thing.
Speaker A:So, like, you didn't grow up eating, I guess probably like hill people food then?
Speaker B:I didn't eat a lot of vegetables.
Speaker B:My sister and I have both lamented that we never knew what a fresh peach tastes like.
Speaker B:And now I'm almost too afraid to try it.
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean, anything we couldn't grow just came in a can because you buy groceries once a month.
Speaker A:You can't.
Speaker A:You're not buying anything fresh.
Speaker A:I thought asparagus was disgusting until I realized that I had only ever eaten that canned kind that turns into mucus.
Speaker A:And so I had fresh asparagus once as an adult.
Speaker A:I was in my 20s and I was like, this is, ain't.
Speaker A:This ain't the same shit.
Speaker B:Yeah, well, I had.
Speaker B:I had.
Speaker B:I had Appalachian grandmothers.
Speaker B:So I got a lot of fresh bread and I got, you know, a lot of roasts and fried chicken and biscuits and gravy and fried potatoes.
Speaker A:Do you ever eat poke salad?
Speaker B:My grandpa would.
Speaker B:Would fry up anything that he caught in his traps.
Speaker B:He kept an acre garden up on the hill on the land that I just sold.
Speaker B:He'd have traps out.
Speaker B:So you'd go to his house and he'd have a groundhog all fried up sitting there.
Speaker A:Oh, my God.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Things like, I don't.
Speaker B:I. I will not eat meat at random person's house ever.
Speaker B:Because my grandfather, he tried to trick me into it.
Speaker B:I almost thought.
Speaker B:I almost took a bite one time and it was like gopher or something.
Speaker B:It was gonna.
Speaker A:Good eating.
Speaker A:No turtles.
Speaker B:Yeah, no, thank you.
Speaker A:I mean, there wasn't.
Speaker A:People didn't really eat much meat, honestly.
Speaker A:I mean, there was.
Speaker A:They ate a lot of pork fat, a lot of.
Speaker A:But you're not gonna slaughter anything else because it's either working or producing milk.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker A:So it's like occasionally somebody would slaughter a cow that got too old or something.
Speaker A:We would have meat for fucking months.
Speaker A:It was amazing.
Speaker A:But we ate a lot of.
Speaker A:A lot of this.
Speaker A:The, like, recipes where I'm from revolve around pig Fat of some kind, bacon grease and a green.
Speaker B:My mom ate this concoction.
Speaker B:She would put buttermilk in a cup and a green onion, the whole thing, and pour bacon grease and put cornbread in it and eat it with a spoon.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker A:My dad still does that.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It was, like, one of her favorite things in the whole world.
Speaker A:Did she put sugar in it or pepper?
Speaker B:Pepper, yeah.
Speaker A:My dad would put sugar in it.
Speaker B:Have you ever had a bag of peanuts poured into a Pepsi?
Speaker A:No.
Speaker B:Oh, that was a big one of my dad's.
Speaker B:Try it one of these days if you like sweet.
Speaker B:Do you like sweet and salty together?
Speaker A:Yeah, but I don't drink pot.
Speaker B:Me neither.
Speaker B:But it's a nice treat once in a while.
Speaker A:Next time, if I makes it.
Speaker A:Next time, I'm in the company of both a bag of peanuts and a Pepsi, I'll try.
Speaker B:It's really good.
Speaker B:And I don't.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:Because I. I quit soda, like, 10 years ago.
Speaker B:Unless I'm eating Chipotle and then I have to have a Mountain Dew.
Speaker B:That's the only.
Speaker A:Sometimes all.
Speaker A:Sometimes all you can think about is getting a.
Speaker A:Getting a hold of a.
Speaker A:Of a Pepsi or something, and I don't know what it is.
Speaker A:Like, it seizes me because we did grow up on.
Speaker A:My dad worked for Coke for a while, actually.
Speaker A:I forgot about that.
Speaker A:There's a Coke plant up in Corbin, and I still have the jacket he wore.
Speaker B:We got a lot of stuff that fell off those trucks they drove.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:One time I asked him, they got a case of Pantene shampoo, I'll never forget.
Speaker B:And I was like, where'd this come from?
Speaker B:Mark said it fell off the back of the truck, and I literally believed him.
Speaker A:You thought that's what it was?
Speaker A:Yeah, I did.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:The first time somebody told me that, I was like, well, is it broken?
Speaker A:Like, does it work?
Speaker A:Is it.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:That's the thing.
Speaker A:Like, most of our speech was euphemistic.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And you just have to learn it as you go.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:You say poke salad.
Speaker B:A poke to me is a bag.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Well, you're from.
Speaker A:So that.
Speaker A:I don't like where I'm from.
Speaker A:People didn't say that.
Speaker A:But I know other places in, like, further east North Carolina, they say poke is a bag.
Speaker A:But we.
Speaker A:I don't.
Speaker A:I didn't hurt.
Speaker A:I didn't hear that until.
Speaker B:Have you ever heard of green bell peppers being called mangoes?
Speaker B:That was big around down there, but basically, anything that got pickled, they would call mangoes.
Speaker B:And so you'd grow your bell peppers and you'd pickle them for the, for the winter.
Speaker B:But I, I didn't know what a mango was until I was in high school.
Speaker A:Oh man, people must have thought she was nuts.
Speaker B:Yeah, I learned because I was.
Speaker B:I didn't join girl scouts until I was in the seventh grade.
Speaker B:I was in girl Scouts like my freshman year and I think that's when we had the fruit tasting party and so I tried a mango and was totally blown away.
Speaker A:Yeah, this tastes nothing like a pickled pepper.
Speaker B:Nothing like nothing.
Speaker B:But yeah, we ate a lot of fast food and my sister and I both have battled our weight our whole lives, you know, and I think that's part of it.
Speaker B:But my mom, like you said, they worked multiple jobs and my mom, she just, she was, she, she loved to take care of us and things like that, but she worked a lot and so we would just order pizza or whatever.
Speaker B:It was just easier.
Speaker B:I still make her chili to this day.
Speaker A:I make my dad's chili.
Speaker B:Yeah, well, and was a big one.
Speaker A:If, if there had been restaurants, I'm sure people where I'm from would have done that too because it would have been so much easier.
Speaker A:You know, my mom had, I remember eating, you know, she had us like five to 10 recipes that she could just whip out like nothing.
Speaker A:And we ate those on a loop for my entire childhood as part of my ADHD.
Speaker B:I have, I didn't get diagnosed till I was 42, but I've had clear signs my entire life.
Speaker B:Especially when I was little, I would go through phases where I would only eat one thing for months at a time.
Speaker B:When I was in doing my undergrad for the second time, I got on a Wendy's chili kick and ate it like every day for a year.
Speaker A:I didn't know that was an adhd.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's an ADHD thing.
Speaker A:I got diagnosed this year and I.
Speaker B:Do that when I was a kid.
Speaker B:Do you know Castleberry's hot hot dog sauce?
Speaker B:It's, it's just a, it's a bean and, and meat, it's like a paste.
Speaker B:It's just a hot dog sauce that, you know, you put it on top of hot dogs.
Speaker B:I don't like hot do, but I like hot dog sauce on bread.
Speaker B:And that was all I would eat was this hot dog sauce on bread.
Speaker B:And like they would buy it for me by the case.
Speaker B:And when my dad was cleaning out my grandparents house the first time he found a whole case of that still in their closet from the 80s.
Speaker A:I, I remember finding all this, like, the food from the company store?
Speaker A:Because they never officially outlawed company towns.
Speaker A:And so Jellicoe was a company town until the.
Speaker A:Until my parents were born.
Speaker A:And so you can still find company credit.
Speaker A:Like the little, like, plug nickels and stuff around there.
Speaker A:The food they had at the company store was like government cheese, potted meat, like gigantic sacks of evaporated or dried rice and potatoes and stuff.
Speaker A:And so you'd find it decades later and it would still, like.
Speaker A:I would almost be like, is this edible?
Speaker A:Like, this might still be good.
Speaker A:This stuff is made not to expire because it's basically military surplus.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:I got to say, government cheese makes a killer grilled cheese.
Speaker A:I still love that shit.
Speaker A:Yeah, I can't.
Speaker A:I will tear up a viney sausage.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:I can't do mystery meat.
Speaker B:I don't like hot dogs.
Speaker B:I don't like those little sausages.
Speaker B:I don't like bologna.
Speaker B:I can't do that.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah.
Speaker B:I don't like most lunches.
Speaker A:Baloney.
Speaker A:Fried baloney.
Speaker A:Well, I was the oldest too, so I got cooking duties before the others.
Speaker A:And so when you're like nine and you're trying to figure out how to feed siblings and I, like, couldn't do anything much.
Speaker A:I could boil water and I could make a grilled cheese.
Speaker A:We just started trying to find new things to stick in the skillet or new things to boil.
Speaker A:And so that's how I invented ramen abomination.
Speaker A:Because we would take these.
Speaker A:Those just maroochen ramen packs, and then try to find shit in the fridge that was about to go bad, like celery or whatever, and cut it up and throw it in there.
Speaker A:I still made that.
Speaker A:When I was in college, I just started putting.
Speaker A:I put peanut butter in there one time, and it kind of tasted like pad Thai.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Chili with peanut butter sandwich is one of my favorite things in this world.
Speaker A:We didn't do that.
Speaker A:I. I learned about that from you.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Have you tried it yet?
Speaker A:No, I. I live alone and don't cook anymore.
Speaker A:My meals are.
Speaker A:It's a rotation of cereal and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Speaker A:Because I don't know how to exist as a singular unit.
Speaker A:I don't know how to.
Speaker A:If I don't have people whose well being is tied up with my own well being, I just say fuck it all and don't do anything.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Shannon's like that.
Speaker A:And I think that I. I know people who are from, like, middle class backgrounds and from the Midwest, and they're not like that.
Speaker A:They're not built that way.
Speaker A:They.
Speaker A:They're able to be independent in regards to, like, domestic things or just having desires.
Speaker A:I don't have desires.
Speaker A:If I don't have work to do or somebody to take care of or somebody to look after, I don't know what to do with myself.
Speaker A:Some redneck trauma.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:I was.
Speaker B:I was the youngest, so my experience was a little different.
Speaker B:And my brother and I had some problems and my mom separated us.
Speaker B:So when we weren't in school for the summers and stuff, after I turned like eight, I would go stay at my grandma's.
Speaker B:She was a nanny for an m. For an MD and a PhD.
Speaker B:They had three kids and they lived like right behind where she lived.
Speaker B:Um, so I would go to Grandma's and I would be there from the time she would go to work before the girls got up and come back home after the girls had been bathed at night.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:So she was gone all day every day.
Speaker B:She would get home in time to watch Jeopardy.
Speaker B:So I would be there in her apartment by myself for hours upon hours.
Speaker B:And they would leave me money.
Speaker B:Cause I was too young to cook and.
Speaker B:And I was able to order my own Giovanni's, my own dominoes and things like that.
Speaker A:That's a totally different kind of self sufficiency.
Speaker B:Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker B:I kind of.
Speaker B:Thinking back on it, they were really letting, like, what would have happened if one of those delivery men would have figured out I was 8 years old and by myself?
Speaker B:You know what I mean?
Speaker B:Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker A:I didn't know.
Speaker A:I didn't know how to order like food over the phone until college.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Oh, no, I learned that one early.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I was always the one that got sent in to go pick it up too, because I was the youngest.
Speaker A:What's something that you.
Speaker A:What's something you learned that you didn't know when you went away to live with normal people?
Speaker B:The Catholics existed.
Speaker B:My first college roommate was a Catholic and all my friends were Catholics.
Speaker B:And I was like, what the hell?
Speaker B:I thought everybody was either Baptist.
Speaker A:There's different kinds of Christians.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So many little things.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I keep like every.
Speaker A:I remember them sometimes.
Speaker A:Like I never.
Speaker A:I didn't see a crosswalk until I went to college.
Speaker B:People have family photos where people are not smoking in them or people don't.
Speaker A:Or you don't let people smoke in the house.
Speaker A:Midwesterners, they don't let you smoke in your.
Speaker A:In their house because it's their house and they don't smoke and it's rude.
Speaker A:And I'M like, wow, this is totally different.
Speaker A:Like, you let company do whatever.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:You feed them your last egg.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:You do.
Speaker B:You do family and stuff.
Speaker B:I. I kind of like it when people come over and smoke because I think it makes me think of mom.
Speaker B:The sell.
Speaker B:The smell of cigarettes make.
Speaker B:Makes me think of my mom and dad.
Speaker A:So my peppa, my mom's dad worked in the mines, like, his whole life.
Speaker A:In a company town, they give folks the leftover materials from as they excavate the mines, like the beams and things.
Speaker A:And so if you.
Speaker A:If you collect those, you can build additions onto your house.
Speaker A:He even put a bathroom in later.
Speaker A:They had running water.
Speaker A:After a time, they still had a well, though.
Speaker A:But it was still, like in.
Speaker A:A lot of hillbilly houses are like this.
Speaker A:There's a main room that's right in the middle, and the potbelly stove or whatever it is will be in there.
Speaker A:And that's where everybody sits, like, all the cousins, all the family or whatever.
Speaker A:And then when it's time for bed, they all go off to the separate parts that have been built out on the house.
Speaker A:And my earliest sense memories is sitting around when I was a baby, kind of dozing off because it was getting late, listening to the grown people, you know, their voices kind of rumbling and talking about shit I didn't understand and smoking cigarettes, and it was like being in the womb.
Speaker A:That's like the safest I've ever felt.
Speaker B:That's how I feel about going to bingo and walking outside and smelling.
Speaker B:You know, it's.
Speaker B:It's such a visceral throwback for me, the smell.
Speaker B:Because like on.
Speaker B:On halftime at bingo, you walk outside and everybody's out there smoking, and you just walk into a cloud.
Speaker B:And the smell of whiskey, the smell of whiskey.
Speaker B:And that reminds me of my mom.
Speaker B:It makes me almost throw up when I smell it.
Speaker B:I can't handle smelling alcohol.
Speaker A:My family wasn't drinkers.
Speaker A:I mean, there just wasn't, like you kind of had to choose.
Speaker A:I mean, if you.
Speaker A:If you were somebody who.
Speaker A:Who had the resources to.
Speaker A:To get alcohol, then you would do that or whatever.
Speaker A:But it was really frowned upon.
Speaker A:Like, there was a big stigma associated with alcohol when I grew up.
Speaker B:My mom would talk shit about her grandfather, who was the town drunk, as she called him, and how they found him, and they had to.
Speaker B:What's the word I'm looking for?
Speaker B:Juice him at the end.
Speaker B:And she would talk all kinds of shit about that.
Speaker B:And that's exactly what happened to her,.
Speaker A:You know, And These things repeat themselves.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And vices.
Speaker B:Vices are main killers in my family.
Speaker B:I can't tell you how many people have died from COPD and lung cancer.
Speaker B:And, you know, my mom died straight up from alcoholism, cirrhosis of the liver.
Speaker B:And my brother died of a drug overdose.
Speaker B:And he was a full fledged alcoholic his whole life.
Speaker B:He.
Speaker B:He was an alcoholic.
Speaker B:By the time he was a teenager, there was.
Speaker B:There was no.
Speaker A:I was too.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Like, well, good for you that you made it out.
Speaker B:He.
Speaker B:He did not make it out.
Speaker A:Yeah, I. I don't know what sexy gay angel descended on me to, you know, fix that or whatever, but, like, I'm.
Speaker A:I'm one of the lucky ones.
Speaker A:Like, I just woke up one day and it was gone.
Speaker A:It didn't happen for my brother.
Speaker A:I was telling somebody this the other day about, like, how, you know, our.
Speaker A:The people we go to high school with are dead.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:Of opioids, the war, and doing redneck shit.
Speaker A:My mom says they died of.
Speaker A:Hey, guys, watch this.
Speaker A:Just like, you feel the time, right?
Speaker A:There's.
Speaker A:There's no work.
Speaker A:It's not that there's nothing to do.
Speaker A:It's that there's nothing to aspire for.
Speaker A:And so you just do increasingly dumber shit.
Speaker A:I mean, I knew somebody who died from falling off a bridge that they were only on because of a dare.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:I knew somebody that fell off a trellis.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's what it was.
Speaker B:Teenager.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah, they were bored out walking.
Speaker A:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker A:And sometimes it's just that nobody is ever around or nobody thinks to say, what the fuck?
Speaker A:And I don't know where that learning gets derailed, but it is systemic.
Speaker A:It's hopelessness.
Speaker A:I think it's lack of self respect.
Speaker B:The cycle of poverty, man.
Speaker A:The cycle of poverty.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:It's, you know, because we grow up and we see our parents strug.
Speaker B:My mom would have been so happy if I had just married some random truck driver, lived up a holler, had five kids and had that life.
Speaker B:She would have been completely proud of me and whatever.
Speaker B:She didn't understand what I did.
Speaker B:She didn't understand my going to school.
Speaker B:She didn't understand my being gay.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:I rose above my raising, you know, and she didn't understand that.
Speaker A:Did it, did it sometimes feel like she was a little, like, uncomfortable with that?
Speaker B:Oh, yeah, 100%, yeah.
Speaker A:My mom, at several points of my professional career has given me the don't get a bubby raisin talk.
Speaker A:And it's like I feel this profound insecurity or inferiority complex thing.
Speaker B:My dad, when we got into a big fight about white privilege one night, and it was.
Speaker B:I was still pretty new into the whole field, and I didn't have all the words that I have now that I could have had a better conversation with him, but he got to screaming, and this was Mark, and he said to me, you know, for somebody that's getting a PhD, you're not real smart, are you?
Speaker B:That, like, took the breath out of my lungs, you know, because, like, your parents are supposed to be the ones that are rooting for you.
Speaker B:My biological father, he called me professor and sent me gifts and, you know, just told me every time I talked to him how proud he was of me, my mom and Mark.
Speaker B:I think if I had quit with a master's degree, it would have been fine.
Speaker A:Weirdly, things between me and my family in regards to a lot of things, particularly politics, got easier to navigate the more I distanced myself from them because of the transition.
Speaker A:It was transitioning that it was like drawing a line in the sand.
Speaker A:You know, I was like, you either get to come with me on this, or you get to never have any information about what I'm doing.
Speaker A:I'm not going to cut you out, but I'm never going to let you in again.
Speaker A:And each of them, even though I didn't have to say that explicitly, they, I believe, understood me enough to know that that was what was on the line.
Speaker A:And, you know, fucking.
Speaker A:My dad's a Republican.
Speaker A:He was until recently.
Speaker A:Luckily, fucking hates Trump.
Speaker B:My dad was.
Speaker B:He was a Democrat for all intents and purposes.
Speaker B:But after he.
Speaker B:He lost the bingo, he went back to truck driving.
Speaker B:And he was around a lot of very uneducated redneck men, and they talked him into not getting the COVID shot and things like that.
Speaker B:And he ended up dying of COVID Yeah.
Speaker A:And it's so predatory, this misinformation.
Speaker A:This, like, the systemization of all oppressions.
Speaker A:Duh.
Speaker A:Is.
Speaker A:It's predatory.
Speaker A:But it's still hard, I think, for people to see the victims of that as human sometimes.
Speaker A:And I get that.
Speaker A:I struggle with it, too.
Speaker A:Sometimes I'm like, if you say one more fucking word, you're going to learn how red I am.
Speaker A:They cosplay rednecks here, this town.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker B:Everybody does.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's, you know, it's a trope.
Speaker B:You know, missing teeth and talking like this.
Speaker A:No, I mean, they literally, like, these people think they're rednecks.
Speaker A:Oh, they're.
Speaker A:They think that they're Small town America, conservative, Hoorah Trump, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker A:They drive big trucks they don't need.
Speaker A:They dress up like they're going to work, but they ain't.
Speaker A:It's really weird.
Speaker A:I don't know if you've seen this, and I saw it a little bit there when we were in Ohio, to people flying a Confederate flag, dressing up like, wearing clodhoppers and chip kickers and Carhartt things.
Speaker A:And it's like, have you ever driven a tractor?
Speaker A:I feel like somebody.
Speaker A:It makes me feel very like my culture is not your costume.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:And they're the ones that also are pro cop.
Speaker B:Because if you know real rednecks, they are like the police.
Speaker B:No.
Speaker B:You know, NASCAR came from, you know,.
Speaker A:Literally running from the police.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:It's so weird.
Speaker A:They, they're just so, like humping the legs of any authority figure they can find, looking.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:It's like you are missing the point about what redneck is.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Redneck is somebody that is oppositionally defiant to anybody who tries to tell them what to do.
Speaker A:Now.
Speaker A:Yeah, there's that overlap between maybe rednecks are just forgetting who they are now.
Speaker A:Maybe they're so defeated and so just fucking kicked down that Trump sounds reasonable to them or something.
Speaker A:I don't know what that is and I'm not going to try to defend any redneck support of Trump.
Speaker A:But the origin in the history of redneck is a fucking unionizer.
Speaker A:The town I lived in fought the cold Wars.
Speaker A:Like the first wave of people in the cold wars were from Jellicoe.
Speaker A:That was union organizing.
Speaker A:And that's where red, that's where the term redneck came from.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:They wore the bandanas around their neck and, and it's like to, to be, to have that kind of history and not understand what's so cool about that and rather be falling all over people.
Speaker B:And wearing back to blue.
Speaker A:We back to blue or whatever.
Speaker B:Police lives matter.
Speaker A:If you love cops so much, just go be one and shut the up about it.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:Oh, they don't want you.
Speaker A:Is that what this is?
Speaker A:We're going to get canceled on our first episode, apparently.
Speaker A:Well, who's this episode sponsored by.
Speaker B:Ancestry, apparently.
Speaker A:Ancestry.com.
Speaker B:The Kentucky Lotto see going when we.
Speaker B:You say you would go from Tennessee up to Kentucky, we would go from Ohio down to Kentucky because cigarettes are cheaper.
Speaker A:Yeah, they are.
Speaker A:They still are.
Speaker B:If you cross the bridge from Portsmouth into Kentucky, either direction you turn, there's five or six cigarette stores you know, you can go to.
Speaker A:That was actually my first My first hustle was selling cigarettes to kids on the playground.
Speaker B:Oh, wow.
Speaker A:A quarter a piece.
Speaker A:We were on free lunch, so we never had money.
Speaker A:Almost all of Jellica was on free lunch.
Speaker A:But you could buy, buy little ice creams for a quarter after lunch at the school.
Speaker A:And so David and Vanessa wanted them.
Speaker A:And so I would steal cigarettes from mom.
Speaker A:Normally.
Speaker A:I felt kind of bad about it.
Speaker A:Although I did know this one woman who kept a deep freeze chest freezer full of cartons of Marlboro Reds.
Speaker A:And so I would take those and sell cigarettes on the playground.
Speaker A:That's kind of how I started smoking.
Speaker A:I had to make them look cool.
Speaker A:I'm a good salesman.
Speaker B:I saw you smoking a cigarette.
Speaker B:I thought you quit.
Speaker A:I did quit.
Speaker A:And then I moved to this hell hole.
Speaker B:Gotcha.
Speaker B:According to Facebook.
Speaker B:Facebook has been a little over 10 years since I quit.
Speaker A:I started some medication.
Speaker A:I'm trying to take better care of myself.
Speaker A:I've got to be a better friend to people and myself.
Speaker A:I was more mentally ill than normal the past few months and it got, it got kind of rough.
Speaker A:So I called a doctor and started some medicine.
Speaker A:But the medicine I'm on is supposed to also help me quit smoking.
Speaker A:So I've set a goal.
Speaker A:I'm tapering off.
Speaker A:We'll see.
Speaker A:Shut up.
Speaker A:Can you hear her?
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:She's featured on many.
Speaker A:I don't know why she does this.
Speaker B:She just wants to be a part of it.
Speaker A:She's, she's just a diva.
Speaker B:I miss having cats.
Speaker B:Both of mine died.
Speaker A:I know.
Speaker A:This is episode sponsored by Ziggy.
Speaker A:Oh, she just stuck her shitty paw in my mouth.
Speaker B:Yum.
Speaker B:I've never met Ziggy.
Speaker B:Hello, kitten.
Speaker A:She did almost kill me recently.
Speaker A:She bit a hole through my hand and it, I got sepsis.
Speaker A:No, I have a load of antibiotics.
Speaker B:I got bit by a cat one time.
Speaker B:It was a wild kitten and I had to go to the er.
Speaker B:I didn't have insurance at the time and so they made me come back the emergency room.
Speaker B:I had to come back every day for a week and I got an IV drip.
Speaker B:My hand turned like black.
Speaker B:It was disgusting.
Speaker B:I'm prone to accidents.
Speaker B:I've almost had my arm ripped off.
Speaker B:My leg almost fell off from going to the beach.
Speaker B:I've had.
Speaker A:You've had it rough.
Speaker A:Like I, that's another place where I really got off light.
Speaker A:Like all the redneck shit I did.
Speaker A:I have not been maimed or, or as ill as I should be.
Speaker B:Yeah, I, I, I haven't been so lucky.
Speaker B:I have been maimed,.
Speaker A:I think.
Speaker A:So I did find out.
Speaker A:This is getting back to Ancestry.com.
Speaker A:There's obviously inbreeding in Jellicoe.
Speaker A:Before, like, it opened.
Speaker A:It was.
Speaker A: arted by two families in like: Speaker A:It would not have lasted if they hadn't found the coal there.
Speaker A:Nicole brought in freed and escaped slaves and indentured servants who couldn't find work anywhere else.
Speaker A:So they came to the mines.
Speaker A:And so that's why, like, the, the ethnic makeup of Jellicoe is Melungeon.
Speaker B:That's what my family is.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:My papa was Melungeon.
Speaker B:That would make you Melungeon, my friend.
Speaker A:Yeah, I know, I'm Melungeon too, but I was trying to talk to somebody, but it's weird.
Speaker A:I don't talk to many people about it up here because they.
Speaker A:You have to explain the whole thing and it gets real awkward.
Speaker A:These people don't know what it's like to live somewhere where slavery happened.
Speaker A:They don't have to talk about this shit.
Speaker A:They don't have to look at their own family tree and, and look at the names of the places around them.
Speaker A:Shit like that.
Speaker A:Like it's not staring them in the face all the time.
Speaker A:But yeah, I was talking to someone about it and they were like, am I allowed to say melungeon?
Speaker A:I was like, actually, I don't know.
Speaker A:It's the only word for us, but it's probably.
Speaker A:It is a slur.
Speaker A:It's just.
Speaker A:It's such a niche unknown group that nobody ever made a proper word for us.
Speaker B:Yeah, a lot of people have never even heard of what melungeon is.
Speaker B:So I almost wrote my dissertation about that, but I thought the research would be real boring.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker A:Well, for.
Speaker A:For the listeners, let's say that melungeon is a portmanteau slash derivative of the word melange, French for to mix.
Speaker A:And it is an ethnic slurry of Scotch Irish, a native tribe, often Cherokee.
Speaker A:But for me in particular, it's Algonquin and Choctaw and Cree because Cherokee were long gone by the time Smithburg was found.
Speaker A:And African American, West African slave.
Speaker A:And it's just that the, the places where Melungeon cultures happened is because they're places where everybody ran away to.
Speaker A:To hide and then they stayed isolated.
Speaker B:That's how they ended up from North Carolina over to Tennessee, you know?
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:That's where my people are from.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker B:When.
Speaker B:When the guy from, from.
Speaker B:From Bavaria got off the boat, he went directly to North Carolina and Within, like, three generations, they had gone to Tennessee, and then from there they moved up through Kentucky up to southern Ohio.
Speaker A:Yep, That's.
Speaker A:My family came from North Carolina and, like, tidewaters.
Speaker A:West Virginia or Virginia.
Speaker A:Not West Virginia.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:My dad lived in Virginia when he died, but we weren't from there.
Speaker B:My stepmother was from there.
Speaker A:Do you think people who aren't rednecks know this much about their family tree?
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:My family, like I told you the other day, is a founding family of Salyersville, Kentucky.
Speaker B:And so the McGolfin County Historical Society has put together my entire family tree.
Speaker B:I've been nominated to be the family historian because I had some interest in this stuff, and they all pitched in and bought it for me.
Speaker B:A funny story about that is that I'm on page, like, 4,000 or something.
Speaker B:My.
Speaker B:My biological father and my adopted father were cousins.
Speaker B:So a few pages before our entry is my grandfather's entry where Mark is listed as his son.
Speaker B:So in.
Speaker B:In my entry, my mom is listed as my dad's first wife and the mother of his children.
Speaker B:And on Mark's mom is listed as his second wife.
Speaker B:So my mom ended up in the Reisner family history book more than any of the Reisners.
Speaker B:And she hated the Reisners.
Speaker A:I remember when my papa was still alive, like, every holiday was.
Speaker A:I remember the old folks sitting around talking about who was still alive.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:But they would also be going back and back through generations.
Speaker A:My grandmother Bolin would do this whole taxonomy because the Bolands were the founding.
Speaker A:Like, they own the mines, still are the family that owned the mines.
Speaker A:And so, like, they're like royalty.
Speaker A:My parents are like this white trash Romeo and Juliet because my mom is from people who work the mines and my dad is from people who owned them.
Speaker A:Grandmother was not going to give us a red scent, though, because she hated the dad.
Speaker A:Well, should we wrap this yarn up?
Speaker B:Sounds good to me, friend.
Speaker A:We don't know what topic's going to be on next week.
Speaker A:Let's.
Speaker A:Let's guess.
Speaker A:Let's try to guess what we're going to talk about.
Speaker A:And then we'll be completely wrong because both of us ramble.
Speaker A:We're going to talk about church.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Join us for.
Speaker B:That's a rich one.
Speaker A:Join us for church.
Speaker A:My stories about church will probably surprise people.
Speaker A:I mean, there's the usual.
Speaker B:I come from a long line of Pentecostals, like casting out demons and.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah.
Speaker B:And that kind of thing.
Speaker A:Did you ever speak in tongues?
Speaker B:Yeah, I didn't I know I did.
Speaker B:My grandmother did.
Speaker B:So after my parents divorced, my dad went out of town to work.
Speaker B:And whenever he would come back in town, I would stay with him, like, all weekend, and we'd stay at his mom's house.
Speaker B:And I remember waking up at, like, five in the morning because she would be shouting her prayers in tongues in her bedroom.
Speaker A:I mean, I did it on purpose.
Speaker A:I knew.
Speaker A:I mean, it was kind of faking, but also, like, it's the adrenaline.
Speaker A:And so, like, it's like I was savvy to what was happening, but it was still kind of an experience.
Speaker A:It wasn't a spiritual one, but I was like, this is interesting.
Speaker A:I just.
Speaker A:I got a lot of data from it because I was a little fucking weirdo who didn't know how to have friends.
Speaker A:And so I just studied people all the time.
Speaker B:I have a story I'll tell you next week about how my.
Speaker B: ntecostal ass ended up in the: Speaker A:Excellent.
Speaker A:Join us next week for Speaking in Tongues, the Church Christmas Play, and Outhouses behind the Church.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker A:All right, subscribe, like, wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll see you next time.
Speaker A:Say hi to mom and them.
