Hillbilly Elegy

man answered with admirable candor: “I
could say yes, but honestly, probably
not. I’ll probably be back at it tomorrow
night.”
I never saw that man again. Before
he left, someone did ask him where he
was from. “Well, I’ve lived here in
Hamilton for most of my life. But I was
born down in eastern Kentucky, Owsley
County.” At the time, I didn’t know
enough about Kentucky geography to tell
the man that he had been born no more
than twenty miles from my grandparents’
childhood home.