I took the photo above about a half mile from my home near Ottumwa, Iowa. I’ll concede that I live in southern Iowa and that there are a few who fly Confederate flags (the vast minority, trust me). But this is Iowa–not the Appalachians, not the South. Still, we are no strangers to hillbillies.

Hillbilly: an unsophisticated country person, associated originally with the remote regions of the Appalachians

The official definition identifies the unsophisticated country person. Think Jed Clampett, Granny, Jethro, and Ellie Mae of the Beverly Hillbillies. Think squirrel stew, moonshine, and corn cob pipes. Backwards, backwoods folk who use words like vittles, reckon, fixin’ to, and hankerin’ for.

Truthfully, I’ve been taken for a hillbilly–of sorts. When I moved to Wisconsin, my high schools students were not sure how to take me. They marveled at the way I spoke, asking me to repeat words and phrases and barely containing their amusement when I did. After a few weeks, a sophomore student blurted out, “You’re kind of a hillbilly, aren’t you? You’re from the South, right?” I simply smiled and said, “A hillbilly? From the South? Um, not quite. I’m from Nebraska.” He persisted. “But you talk like one. You say ant instead of aunt (the more pretentious sounding awnt, characteristic of those who live the upper Midwest). You say water fountain instead of bubbler and pop instead of soda. That’s pretty hillbilly, if you ask me.”

When I eventually convinced my students that I was, indeed, a Midwesterner and neither a hillbilly nor a Southerner, they grudgingly replaced their Ellie Mae Clampett image of me with a Laura Ingalls Wilder one from Little House on the Prairie. Most certainly, I had lived in a sod house, taken the family vehicle, a Conestoga wagon, to the kinfolk’s place, and ridden my pony five miles to school. Certainly, I was the only authentic pioneer they would ever know. And certainly, I was now displaced and living among the truly cultured Northerners.

When I moved to southern Iowa, I foolishly thought my hillbilly days were behind me. Not so. Months into my Iowa life, I became painfully aware of the geographic and cultural boundary created by Interstate 80. North of I-80? The territory of the more cultured, the more educated, the more professional folk. South of I-80? The less cultured, the less educated, and the less professional folk. After all, living in southern Iowa is tantamount to living in Missouri, which–we all know–is tantamount to living in Arkansas. Move over Jed Clamplitt. The southern Iowans are fixin’ to take their place in the halls of hillbilly annals.

Each morning as I walk by this abandoned property, I find it difficult not to look, once again, at the tangible reminder of hillbilly angst: Down with the Union, with Yankee bankers, law enforcement, and government.  It is equally difficult to look away from the remnants of a life, of the people who once called this place their home.

The whole has lost its essential parts. A splintered jumble of foundation sits unmoored from its former life. An abandoned Crown Victoria, a couch that oozes its remaining stuffing, twisted metal frames of appliances, and trash that has survived the elements give testimony to loss. But to Yankee injustice?

The Sanctuary of Hillbilly, no longer contained in the hills and hollers of Appalacia, provides its residents with a certain mantle of protection against self-reflection and against ownership of consequences which too often are the result of personal choices but which may be written off, self-righteously, as the doings of damn Yankees.

Today, the Sanctuary of Hillbilly has less to do with geography and much more to do with other, equally influential factors: culture, economy, and heritage. I do not use the word sanctuary lightly or facetiously here, for hillbillies–self-proclaimed or otherwise–may take real solace in their hillbilly status, in living among their kind. High school boys who flaunt rebel bumper stickers revel in the camaraderie they find with others who flaunt such rebel signs. Boys who have never ventured farther south than the Iowa-Missouri line boast as if Confederate and/or hill blood runs deep in their veins. Undoubtedly, these are boys who have dabbled in making their own home brews, the evidence of their parties hidden in the hollows of rural southern Iowa.

A visit to one of my favorite flea markets in Rutledge, Missouri is a visit to hillbilly heaven. Shirtless men wearing bib overalls ride four-wheelers, Red Man dribbling down their chins, and chickens tucked under their arms. Their women sit beside them, holding barefoot children or scruffy dogs. For the genuine flea market picker, Rutledge is the real deal: dirt roads, vendors selling exotic fowl next to vendors selling Depression glass, tenderloins the size of dinner plates, and rows upon rows of rusted metal. Oh, there are “nicer”, more civilized flea markets for city folk, but Rutledge is an initiation into the Sanctuary of Hillbilly.

At Rutledge, you can make a good deal on almost anything. Its vendors are there to sell, and their wares offer a virtual cornucopia of stuff. At Rutledge, you can make a friend–or two. You can strike up a conversation with someone you have never seen before and, within minutes, settle into the easy conversation of friends. In truth, Rutledge is less a place than an experience. Seasoned vendors and buyers understand that this experience cannot be duplicated by other upscale flea markets. And they understand that most who visit once will come again, season after season. This is the draw of such hillbilly hospitality: a repeat visit makes you family.

Recently, I read J. D. Vance’s New York Times best selling book, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. Actually, I listened to it first and bought the book later. Vance’s voice–his real and writer’s voice–drew me in quickly. This is a book I wholeheartedly recommend, a book I find myself thinking about daily. Vance’s boyhood hillbilly roots begin in southeastern Kentucky but settle in a poor Rust Belt town in Ohio. In post WWII America, many Kentucky hillbillies migrated north in search of better work and better lives. Vance’s grandparents were no exception.

In the introduction to Hillbilly Elegy, Vance writes:

In our race-conscious society, our vocabulary often extends no further than the color of someone’s skin–“black people,” “Asians,” “white privilege.” Sometimes these broad categories are useful, but to understand my story, you have to delve into the details. I may be white, but I do not identify with the WASPs of the Northeast. Instead, I identify with the millions of working-class white Americans of Scots-Irish descent who have no college degree. To these folks, poverty is the family tradition–their ancestors were day laborers in the southern slave economy, share-croppers after that, coal miners after that, and machinists and millworkers during more recent times. Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. I call them neighbors, friends, and family. 

Hillbillies, rednecks or white trash, neighbors, friends, and family. Vance’s memoir examines all that it means to be hillbilly and the painful, but inevitable, consequences of working-class white culture in America today. In Part 2 of the Sanctuary of Hillbilly, I will share some of Vance’s most profound insights.

Vance, J. D. (2016). Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. HarperCollins.