Breathitt County, J.D. and me

You hear a lot of stories about Kentucky’s ‘Bloody Breathitt’

By Dee Davis

Sigmund Freud says we embrace myth­i­cal ori­gin sto­ries of lead­ers, war­riors, and saints to dis­guise their true iden­ti­ty and to give them mys­ti­cal pow­ers or polit­i­cal agency.

Freud gives the exam­ple of Moses in the Bible who grew up as a young man of wealth and priv­i­lege in Pharaoh’s palace. However we do not think of Moses as a high born Egyptian reformer who led the Jews out of bondage. Instead, we accept him as a child giv­en up by Hebrew par­ents and secret­ly placed in the water near where the roy­al Egyptian fam­i­ly bathed — this done so his float­ing bas­ket could be dis­cov­ered by a princess who would then adopt him. The Moses ori­gin sto­ry is that he was pulled from the bul­rush­es. And Freud points out that this same extrac­tion from the bul­rush­es is the mytho­log­i­cal way Ra and oth­er ancient gods had emerged in Egypt for a thou­sand years before Moses.

A few months back I stopped for a tank of gas and a quick bite at Go Time near the mouth of Lost Creek in Breathitt County, Kentucky. From the quick-stop hot table I ordered a piece of fish and got in my mind I want­ed to split an order of onion rings and roast­ed pota­toes. I explained it inart­ful­ly, and the lady behind the counter said, “Wait a minute. You want pota­toes and onion rings?”

Feeling caught out, I said, “I guess that’s wrong?”

She said, “No judg­ment here, baby. You like what you like.”

When I was grow­ing up in East Kentucky, peo­ple here did not like being iden­ti­fied as hill­bil­lies. A lot of my boomer gen­er­a­tion dis­guised their accents, shunned their family’s coun­try ways, and looked to get out of the moun­tains as soon as a path cleared. In 1960s and ’70s pop­u­lar cul­ture hill­bil­lies were mocked and laughed at in lit­er­a­ture, movies, com­ic strips, as well as on the most-watched TV shows.

Hillbillies say we don’t care what others think, though in truth, we obsess over it

And per­haps worse, Appalachians were pitied in the press and among the intel­li­gentsia for being poor, back­wards, and igno­rant. So when J.D. Vance, a kid who grew up in Middletown, Ohio, goes to Yale law school, and makes it as a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist, sud­den­ly lays claim to his Breathitt County hill­bil­ly roots, it is as if he pulled him­self from the bul­rush­es. Or as the old polit­i­cal saw goes, he was born in a log cab­in he built him­self. And now that he is both the sen­a­tor from Middletown, Ohio, and Breathitt County, Kentucky’s own can­di­date for vice pres­i­dent of the United States, we can take a moment to put the per­son, the place, and the pol­i­tics in perspective.

Since his best-sell­ing book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” hit the stands, a pha­lanx of Appalachians, many who them­selves have escaped the ter­ri­to­ry, have been push­ing back on Vance’s claim to be a hill­bil­ly and his stand­ing to judge the rest of us. In a nut­shell the reac­tion is: His fam­i­ly may have come from Breathitt, but he didn’t, and what he says doesn’t count.

Replete with characterizations of shiftlessness, addiction, and hillbilly self-pity. But in a bad way.

And it has been par­tic­u­lar­ly galling for those, like me, who have spent decades try­ing to set the record straight about Appalachian life and hill­bil­ly stereo­types to in turn see the nation’s élite insti­tu­tions — uni­ver­si­ties, phil­an­thropy, the press — embrace Vance’s account of Appalachia over ours. His book is replete with char­ac­ter­i­za­tions of shift­less­ness, addic­tion, and hill­bil­ly self-pity. But in a bad way. To put a fin­er edge on it, his dystopic view of Appalachians fits hand in glove with the put­downs we fear hear­ing most. As hill­bil­lies we say we don’t care what oth­ers think, though in truth, we obsess over it.

The crys­talline moment for me came when a del­e­ga­tion from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation came to East Kentucky to vis­it and look at our organization’s work. “Hillbilly Elegy” had been required read­ing for the foun­da­tion staff, and they all want­ed to talk about it. None of us did. The offi­cial lead­ing the group told me, “Now after read­ing the book, I think I under­stand your people.”

The con­found­ing thing about Vance, the author, is that not every­thing he says in “Hillbilly Elegy” is easy to dis­miss. He talks about faith, sac­ri­fice, mak­ing good choic­es, not whin­ing, and tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for your­self. He invests a lot of ink telling hill­bil­lies and buck­eyes alike to quit with all the dis­sem­bling. He writes, “We talk about the val­ue of hard work but tell our­selves that the rea­son we’re not work­ing is some per­ceived unfair­ness: Obama shut down the coal mines, or all the jobs went to the Chinese. These are the lies we tell our­selves to solve the cog­ni­tive dissonance—the bro­ken con­nec­tion between the world we see and the val­ues we preach.”

Still if we accept “Hillbilly Elegy” as a self-help book for work­ing class peo­ple, it must make it more curi­ous that J.D. Vance has now aligned him­self with those blam­ing Obama for shut­ting down the coal mines and the Chinese for steal­ing our jobs. What he called lies. He once wrote Donald Trump was “unfit for our nation’s high­est office.” And Vance said he “couldn’t stom­ach Trump.” But if you are run­ning for vice pres­i­dent, you have to be nim­ble and slick. It has become com­mon prac­tice in American democ­ra­cy that what you said in the past, you are per­mit­ted to dis­avow now, if you can dis­miss it as pol­i­tics. You say about past state­ments, that is yesterday’s news.

Threats, shootings, murders, coups well into the 20^th century

The Breathitt County that Vance claims has a unique­ly pecu­liar set of polit­i­cal yes­ter­days. Historically East Kentucky was solid­ly pro-Union and anti-slav­ery pri­or to the Civil War. The region resist­ed efforts by the planters in Louisville and Lexington to have Kentucky secede from the United States. But Breathitt, on the oth­er hand, was an anom­alous Confederate coun­ty in Union ter­ri­to­ry, and that more for polit­i­cal rea­sons than race or a plan­ta­tion econ­o­my. In 1860 a com­par­a­tive­ly small 4% of the coun­ty pop­u­la­tion was list­ed in the cen­sus as slaves. For per­spec­tive, Lincoln was born a hun­dred miles west in a Kentucky coun­ty more favor­able to com­mer­cial farm­ing, and there the per­cent­age of enslaved peo­ple was four to five times larger.

The lega­cy of the Civil War in many of the moun­tain coun­ties was internecine feud­ing, con­flicts between mil­i­tary fam­i­lies that did not end with Lee’s sur­ren­der. And Breathitt County may have been the worst exam­ple. Political life was punc­tu­at­ed by threats, shoot­ings, mur­ders, and coups well into the 20^th century.

Breathitt County was sin­gled out in local, state, and nation­al news­pa­pers as a place where assas­si­na­tion became accept­ed polit­i­cal prac­tice. The best known sto­ry is the 1903 death of attor­ney and Republican reformer James B. Marcum. The threats against Marcum from his polit­i­cal rivals — the judge, the sher­iff —had become such that for a year he only left his home for the cour­t­house sur­round­ed by women and car­ry­ing his infant son. After arriv­ing safe­ly he would pass the child to the entourage and go on to work.

But then one day he was shot in the back after he made it inside of the Breathitt County Courthouse. Shot again and killed as he lay fall­en. The Louisville Courier-Journal wrote, “The feud which took Mr. Marcum’s life, has caused, it is said, no less than forty deaths in the last two years. This would be astound­ing to any­one unfa­mil­iar with these moun­tain vendet­tas…” (“Bloody Breathitt: Politics and Violence in the Appalachian South”).

Pulled from bulrushes, saved by a rogue rhododendron

Like Vance I too was pulled from bul­rush­es. My grand­moth­er also came from Breathitt County, or at least half of her did. Virginia Dare Creech was born in Athol in a house that strad­dled the Breathitt and Lee County line. We used to tell her, “Granny, say you are from Lee County. We don’t want any­body to think we are from Breathitt.” But now I would like to dis­avow those state­ments and say they are yesterday’s news.

And even though I was not born there, I near­ly died in Breathitt County. As a chunky 10-year-old vis­it­ing my cousins in Jackson, we went climb­ing up to the rocks called the Indian Post Office. Suddenly I start­ed slid­ing down a shale cov­ered hill­side and could not stop; in the last sec­ond to be saved from going over a sheer cliff by a rogue rhodo­den­dron that caught me in the crotch.

And to enhance my Breathitt County cre­den­tials, lat­er in life as a divorced father I drove back and forth through Breathitt County each week­end, mak­ing sched­uled stops at the Jackson Hardee’s to buy my boys peach and straw­ber­ry milk­shakes with real fruit you had to force­ful­ly suck through the straw. When I was asked to deliv­er the com­mence­ment address at Jackson High, I told the grad­u­ates about my near-death expe­ri­ence climb­ing up Indian Post Office and that wher­ev­er they end­ed up in the world they should keep Jackson in their hearts. Also at the sug­ges­tion of my sons, I bought each grad­u­at­ing senior his or her own Hardee’s milkshake.

I do not chal­lenge Vance’s ties to Breathitt County, his attempt to be a rur­al politi­cian, or even his account of his grand­moth­er pour­ing gaso­line on his grand­fa­ther and set­ting him on fire. We all have sto­ries. Here are a few of mine.

Politicians visit the region

In 1968 Robert F. Kennedy vis­it­ed a one room Breathitt County school at Barwick on his fact-find­ing vis­it to the region before he announced his can­di­da­cy for pres­i­dent. Later that very day I walked beside Kennedy in Hazard, not Barwick, but I like to think that if I ever had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to address the kids that once went to school there, I would tell them to keep Barwick in their hearts and to be care­ful when climbing.

I was also part of help­ing RFK’s broth­er Teddy’s vis­it to East Kentucky in 1985 as he retraced his brother’s trip. I drove Senator Paul Wellstone in 1998 when he repeat­ed RFK’s jour­ney. I helped Paul set up town halls, school vis­its, and a meet­ing with coal min­ers. I also drove John Edwards around East Kentucky when he reprised the Bobby Kennedy tour in 2007.

And I was exec­u­tive pro­duc­er on a 1987 doc­u­men­tary that looked at Breathitt County schools and the polit­i­cal lega­cy of the pow­er­ful Turner fam­i­ly. Marie R. Turner was super­in­ten­dent of Breathitt County Schools and her hus­band, Irvine, had been cir­cuit judge. Marie ruled the coun­ty with an iron fist and a heart of some­one with an iron fist. My friend, Nick Stump, who lived in Jackson, had to go vis­it Miss Turner and explain his rock and roll band’s plans before the bank would loan him mon­ey to buy a gui­tar amp.

During our film­ing, Buck Maggard, one of the pro­duc­tion team, got a call from a man on his death bed claim­ing to have killed 18 men for Judge Turner. But the prob­lem was that he did not want to con­fess in front of our cam­era. He want­ed Buck to get him on “60 Minutes” so he could come clean to Mike Wallace or Ed Bradley. In the end the sto­ry per­ished with him. Judge Turner had died 20 years earlier.

Not many politi­cians took on the Turner fam­i­ly and suc­ceed­ed. One who did was Jim Maggard, Buck’s younger broth­er, who served sev­er­al terms in the Kentucky General Assembly. He told me he should write a book. He said the way he got elect­ed despite Marie R.’s oppo­si­tion was that he was work­ing at the Jackson radio sta­tion. He record­ed him­self giv­ing a speech blast­ing the Turners. Then he said he laid down a back­ground track of a crowd laugh­ing and applaud­ing. Then he record­ed him­self using dif­fer­ent voic­es from the audi­ence yelling things like, “You tell ‘em, Jim. I’m so mad I can’t.” He ran the speech over and over on the radio. Local lis­ten­ers were stunned that he could get out a crowd of peo­ple not afraid of Marie R.

During the cam­paign he said he was in town elec­tion­eer­ing one day, and Marie Turner saw him and beck­oned him from her car. He said he sheep­ish­ly went over to her, and she asked, “Jim, where did you make that speech?”

He said, “Miss Turner, I can’t lie to you. I record­ed that at my fam­i­ly reunion over at Buckhorn Lake.”

Swapping stuff on E‑Bay with Melania

When Howard Schultz, then the Starbucks CEO, was con­sid­er­ing run­ning for pres­i­dent in 2020, he also want­ed to retrace RFK’s icon­ic trip to Appalachia. Bobby was his hero. I agreed to be tour guide, and our first stop was the Hardee’s in Jackson for cof­fee. I asked a cou­ple of friends, Mark, a lib­er­tar­i­an and a for­mer can­di­date for lieu­tenant gov­er­nor, and Martin, a busi­ness­man who has climbed the tallest moun­tain on five of sev­en con­ti­nents, to join.

Martin explained to us that he was there and ready to go up Everest, but a storm hit, killing 23 sher­pas and the trip no longer made sense. The two told us about his­tor­i­cal plaques up at the Breathitt County cour­t­house com­mem­o­rat­ing the fact that no one was draft­ed from the coun­ty in either World War I or II because the ser­vice quo­ta was more than met by volunteers.

And after a rig­or­ous con­ver­sa­tion Mark intro­duced Howard to oth­ers in the restau­rant includ­ing a colum­nist for the Jackson week­ly, Bobby Deaton, if I have it right. He told Schultz he did not like Starbucks because of the way the employ­ees pushed Schultz around. He also told Schultz that Obama was a Muslim. Howard said, “No, he’s not.” Deaton “cor­rect­ed” him. Then Deaton told Schultz Obama was not born in this coun­try. Howard said, “Actually he was.” Deaton again cor­rect­ed Howard.

We left Hardees to find the his­tor­i­cal mark­ers, and there we ran into the high sher­iff of Breathitt County, Clemons. His sidearm was a yel­low taser blaster, and Howard stopped him and asked about it. Sheriff Clemons asked Howard where he was from. Schultz told him Seattle. The sher­iff said he and his wife had been there. He said Trump had brought them out there and put them up in a fine motel. The sher­iff went on to say that his wife and Melania were big friends. Howard asked how the wives came to know each oth­er and was told Mrs. Clemons and Melania sell a lot of clothes and things togeth­er on E‑Bay.

We found the mark­ers and head­ed for the next stop. The back sto­ry is Sheriff Clemons got into some trou­ble over the dis­ap­pear­ance of evi­dence and $40,000. He decid­ed to not run for re-elec­tion, and the county’s insur­ance com­pa­ny would no longer bond the sher­iff to car­ry a loaded firearm into the cour­t­house. When we pulled away, Howard said, “How can that be right? I am pret­ty sure Trump has not been to Seattle.”

Probably looks like Breathitt County, if you’d never been there

I don’t know how often J.D. Vance gets back to Breathitt County, but he did bring direc­tor Ron Howard in when they were scout­ing loca­tions for the film ver­sion of “Hillbilly Elegy.” Having movie stars like Glenn Close and Amy Adams around could have made a last­ing impres­sion on the coun­ty, changed the sto­ries peo­ple tell for a hun­dred years, but in the end they shot the East Kentucky scenes in North Georgia. That’s film­mak­ing. It prob­a­bly looked a lot like Breathitt County, if you’d nev­er been there, and I’m sure the craft ser­vices out of Atlanta were bet­ter for cater­ing meals than Hardee’s.

We made a lit­tle movie in Rousseau in Breathitt County after the dev­as­tat­ing 2022 East Kentucky Flood (44 dead, thou­sands left home­less). We pro­filed the vol­un­teer fire depart­ment there. When emer­gency ser­vices could not get res­cue boats into the com­mu­ni­ty, the vol­un­teers took charge. And after the water reced­ed they spent the next year get­ting food, cloth­ing, and tools, to vic­tims. We most­ly think of democ­ra­cy as how you reg­is­ter, vote, and gov­ern. But the sys­tem, at its core, is built on the tenet of look­ing after each other.

Marie Turner tried her best to get President Lyndon Johnson to come to Breathitt County. Even named a school LBJ Elementary. She did get First Lady Lady Bird to vis­it the one-room Lick Branch School in 1964. There are pic­tures of Lady Bird using a hand pump to bring up water and of Mrs. Johnson eat­ing a 10-cent lunch with school kids on one of the desks. (LBJ Elementary was shut down in 2018 and now demol­ished. Yesterday’s news.)

After the East Kentucky Flood, President Biden came to Breathitt County on his own. Or maybe the gov­er­nor asked him. He showed up at the Lost Creek School, near the Go Time, and announced what became hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars for rebuild­ing and relief efforts. You’d think that gov­ern­ment help­ing peo­ple in trou­ble would make a dif­fer­ence to vot­ers, that it wouldn’t be ignored or soon for­got­ten. But then, that’s pol­i­tics. Investment is wel­come, but cred­it is fleet­ing. And Vance likes his ticket’s chances in the flood coun­ties this cycle.

I did stop behind a school bus just past there, not long after the flood. That part of the coun­ty was crushed. Maybe half the hous­es were destroyed. I was impa­tient that after­noon and ready to get around the traf­fic and on toward home. This lit­tle chunky boy, 9 or 10, gets off the bus, hands his back­pack to a wait­ing grandad, and runs full speed to what I assume was a new FEMA trail­er parked along Highway 15. The kid gets to the end of the trail­er and throws out both arms, puts his cheek up to the sid­ing, and hugs it. Stands there and hugs a mobile home like it was his long lost dog. You love what you love. No judg­ment here, baby.

Maybe between now and November, J.D. Vance will drop by Hardee’s for a cup of cof­fee on a cam­paign stop between Middletown and North Georgia. I could pop over and swap cor­rec­tions with him. But what I keep deep in my heart is hope that one day I will stop for gas and run into Mrs. Clemons and Melania sit­ting togeth­er enjoy­ing a milk­shake, maybe onion rings and fries, as they post pho­tos of dress­es, shoes, and hand­bags on E‑Bay.

This arti­cle first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is repub­lished here under a Creative Commons license.