backwoods

Finally, we entered Chetaube County, my imaginary birthplace, where the names of the little winding roads and minuscule mountain communities never failed to inspire me: Yardscrabble, Big Log, Upper, Middle and Lower Pigsty, Chicken Scratch, Cooterville, Felchville, Dust Rag, Dough Bag, Uranus Ridge, Big Bottom, Hooter Holler, Quickskillet, Buck Wallow, Possum Strut ... We always say a picture speaks a thousand words, but isn__ the opposite equally true?

True, beneath the human façade, I was an interloper, an alien whose ship had crashed beyond hope of repair in the backwoods of Southern Appalachia__ut at least I__ learned to walk and talk enough like the locals to be rejected as one of their own.