Gilbert Acciardo, who ran an after-school program at a southeastern Kentucky high-school where Sparkman was a substitute teacher, said that when Sparkman — a Florida native — first started doing the Census work, “I said, you’re going into rural Kentucky, isolated areas. Be careful over there — people may not understand that you’re there to gather statistics.
— Occam’s Razor suggests that simple answers - i.e. rural backwater areas of the deep South can be treacherous for strangers - are often the best ones. Anyone familiar with the infamous Jesco White knows that. I grew up 5 miles from the West Virginia border, and I can tell you that the raw beauty of that part of the country is matched by its often brutal and untamed populace. One of my favorite factoids from linguistics class was that there are areas of the Appalachian region that still speak with a Scottish accent because they have been isolated so completely since their ancestors arrived from Scotland. Add a healthy thirst for moonshine and meth and you have a recipe for mayhem that makes Texas look like a bunch of pantywaists. One of my mom’s neighbors used to tell me about driving way up into the hills of WV, and how he would have to duck occassionally when driving where family feuds still carried on in the form of bullets whizzing across the lonely highway. America is a fascinating pastiche of high and low, past and future.
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