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’t the opposite equally true?

~ Sol Luckman

Sol Luckman Adage Appalachia Backwoods Beat Birthplace Comedy Country Deep South Funny Heritage Humor Imaginal Imaginary Imagination Inheritance Picture Received Wisdom Redneck Redneck Humor Road Road Novel Roots Rural Saying South Southern Truism White Trash Words

For most Americans of the eighteenth century, it was assumed impossible for a servant to shed his lowly origins; the meaner sort, as one newspaper insisted, could never “wash out the stain of servility.” There were fears that the meaner sort were treading too close on the heels of those above them.

~ Nancy Isenberg

Nancy Isenberg America Class Poverty White Trash

Every era in the continent's vaunted developmental story had its own taxonomy of waste people-unwanted and unsalvageable. Each era had its own means of distancing its version of white trash from the mainstream ideal.

~ Nancy Isenberg

Nancy Isenberg Class Struggle Economics Poverty White Trash

You really romanticize the white-trash period of your life,' Rain once said to me, which I thought was a little hurtful but perhaps true.

~ Dan Chaon

Dan Chaon Hurtful Romanticize True White Trash