Hillbilly Elegy

shared many regional characteristics
with the southern blacks arriving in
Detroit.”^10
One of Papaw’s good friends—a
hillbilly from Kentucky whom he met in
Ohio—became the mail carrier in their
neighborhood. Not long after he moved,
the mail carrier got embroiled in a battle
with the Middletown government over
the flock of chickens that he kept in his
yard. He treated them just as Mamaw
had treated her chickens back in the
holler: Every morning he collected all
the eggs, and when his chicken
population grew too large, he’d take a
few of the old ones, wring their necks,
and carve them up for meat right in his