Hillbilly Heaven

I grew up with hillbillies in northern Indiana. It was a leafy small town in the ‘50s with a large limestone courthouse and a colorful fair in the fall. Hillbillies had moved there from the south to work in the factories supplying Detroit. Adults said hillbillies had not come there to work. They had only caravanned to Indiana in their beat up Cadillacs to live off our lavish welfare state. 

Since this was an all-white town, hillbillies filled the niche that people of color filled elsewhere. Locals said hillbillies were lazy, stupid drunks who had too many kids out of wedlock. Hillbillies lived on the wrong side of the tracks, literally, and within walking distance of the factories they avoided. 

Hillbillies had their own culture. They joined the Civil Air Patrol while other kids joined the Boy Scouts. When the Civil Air Patrol marched in the parade at fair time, I’d hear smirking comments I did not understand. They also liked country music. A hillbilly girl ran up to me on the way to school one day and got in my face singing “Hey good lookin’ whatcha got cookin’?” I was equally frightened and excited. If you had a southern accent and were poor in that town, you would never be accepted and a barbed wire fence of suspicion always blocked your advance. No one ever invited a hillbilly to a party, and I can't think of any that finally graduated. They were just absent from class one day and were never seen again. People barely noticed. 

Ralph, for instance, was poor and slow and prone to self-mutilation. On occasion he exposed himself to us. A girl once saw him do it and he was drug out of class to the office. Sonny was poor, slow and mean. I stood up to him in a fight one time and he backed down in shame. I was a hero to my classmates, but I felt bad for popping his bubble. As he slunk away his humiliation was obvious. No one ever feared him again. The fright he'd engendered was all that he had and I had taken it from him. Ruby was poor, slow, and large. She was tragically plain and always smelled of corn chips. Other kids said she had cooties. Her dad was a deliveryman, and she stole most of her food from his truck. 

For Christmas in the third grade we were paired with other kids in a gift exchange and Ruby was my partner. I had asked for a brand new baseball with raised red stitching. When she handed me a humble rubber ball instead and said, “Here’s your present,” she smiled nervously, then averted her eyes with shame. At that moment the whole world stopped and fell silent. 

I don’t think I have ever felt more deeply the suffering entailed in my own or someone else’s shame. It was staggering. She was robbed of every possible avenue of escape or denial. Her poverty and vulnerability were obvious to us both. I hated how she had been cornered, and I hated myself as well. I have since discovered the difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is feeling bad about the things you have done. Shame is feeling bad about being who you are. I was feeling guilt, while she was feeling shame. And then there was Shirley. 


Shirley was the prettiest and smartest girl in school. Everyone admired her and wanted to be her friend. For some reason, though, she never invited anyone over. I loved her more than anything I knew, and I was only eight years old. Whenever I thought of her, flowers bloomed inside me, so I was shocked to unearth her secret. Undetected, and lured by the presence in the light behind her eyes, I followed her home from school and saw her enter her home, a dilapidated hillbilly house near the smoke belching rubber plant where all the rest of them lived. She didn't have an accent, and she didn’t smell like corn chips, but she was poor and her parents were hillbillies. 

I never told anyone, and I have kept her secret for 50 years, out of the love that a boy can have for a girl when he's only eight years old.