While we’re on the subject, what’s the origin of the word?
Someone (I think it might have been yojimbo, at one of the Dublin Dopes) told me the “billy” part comes from, well, Billy, a common nickname for Scots and Ulster-Scots Protestants, who were of course one of the largest groups to settle in the eastern mountains. (The “hill” part I think is obvious.) I tried to find verification for this, but couldn’t. Anyone know?
I live in a midwestern industrial town of 40,000 or so, and when I was a wee lad, the two General Motors parts plants here rented billboards in Livingston, Tennessee to advertize available jobs. They knew, and I found out, that mountain people are deeply moral, honest, and hard-working. I’m a city-born flatlander, myself. If I had been born in the hills, I’d have plenty to be proud of. When I say “hillbilly,” I say it with respect.
urban1 asked us:
*Q1: You know the ones. Little education, marrying cousins, moonshining, live in the Ozarks, Tennessee, or:
Q2: Did hillbillies ever actually exist*
Certified Hillbilly checking in here.
I consider myself a Hillbilly. I was born in extreme Southwest Virgina, raised in Upper East Tennessee, and currently live very close to Knoxville, Tennessee. There are lots of other folks around here that are not Hillbillies. We just tolerate 'em. 
Don’t know about marryin’ cousins, I’ve never known or heard of it happening. (except Jerry Lee Lewis, and he is not a Hillbilly.) Jerry Lee was living in Memphis at the time, was orginally from Louisanna (sp?). He doesn’t count.
In my opinion, Hillbilly is largely a state of mind. I am proud of my heritage, as I come from a long line of Hillbillies.
My Dad assisted his brothers in the manufacture of homemade liquor, but never had his own operation. This was in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s. My Grandpa was one of the better known moonshiners in the area. It was a question of economics. Either make and sell liquor and your family eats, or not make liquor and your family does not eat. No legal jobs, therefore no legal income. Dad worked hard all his life and took care of his family, as did all his brothers and sisters. Pappy went legit after the war (no more moonshining, however he did drink his share.) I have no complaints with the way they made their living. At least they worked.
We can and do talk different at times. My Mom, as did her mother, says “bum” for bomb". Probably other things too, but that’s really the only thing that pops into my mind now.
I have aquaintances that make liquor and grow their own weed to this day. The reason they don’t go with “store-bought” is they like the taste of what they can make better than what they can buy. As far as the weed is concerned, they lovingly save seeds from one generation of plants to the next. Some of them are using seeds with a lineage of 20 plus years of growing in this area. Potent smoke, it is. Making liquor is very hard work. Of course, it is mostly for personal consumption, not for resale. They do this in addition to working a regular job. When the evening rolls around they drive home in their Mini-Vans, SUV’s, and sporty autos. Some of them like to drive four-wheel drive pickups because they can get to the “crop” easier.
As I said, I am a Hillbilly. People tell me I have a very strong accent (I sound normal to me) but if I do, at least there is a distinction between me and most every other speech-therapized Tom, Dick and Harry in the country.
I am a Network / PC Tech by trade. Lots of clients are amazed that someone with my accent even knows how to turn a computer on, let alone work with it. Don’t make the mistake of thinking Hill or Southern accent = Dumbass. I know a lot of pretty intelligent folks that have the accent, and you don’t want to get into a battle of wits with them. You will go away thinking you went into the battle unarmed.
Let’s talk about White Trash. Yeah, there is White Trash. There is also Black Trash, Yellow Trash, Red Trash, and probably even Green and Blue Trash. Trash knows no race. Unfortunately there is laziness all over the world. Trash can live in the inner city, the suburbs or the rural areas. No telling when you may run across some.
I know I live in what could be called Hillbilly Country, but we do have gang problems around here. Murders, drive-bys, drug dealing, you name it, it’s here. I guess that just backs up what I wrote in the previous paragraph.
Plenty of Black folks around here. Why wouldn’t a Hillbilly want Black folks around? We also have Hispanics and Asians. Lots of Hillbillies are Black. Long as the next guy takes care of his business and lets me take care of my business, doesn’t matter to me what color he is. Judge people by what’s on the inside, not by the hue of his skin.
Like others we work, we play, go shopping at Wally World, Target and the Mall, love good resturants, go fishing, play golf, love football…just like regular folks. But we do at times get a little “laid back”. We know what to take seriously and what to let slide. That’s called being a Hillbilly.
Anyway, that’s what’s running through this Hillbilly’s mind tonight.
Howard
Good grief!!! I am long-winded tonight.
Thanks, Zumba. 
I came back prepared to Google-search on “Rory Kennedy HBO Appalachia” but you did my work for me.
Yes, it was fascinating.
I was already looking for it when you made your first post Kinsey.
I found the show fascinating too and thought of it when I read the title to this thread.
Ummm… I gotta clarify this, as I was the one who drove Hasil on this tour, if it was the 92 Atlanta show, with Southern Culture On The Skids. Hasil’s always a Wildman; that’s his gig onstage, and drinkin’ does fuel it (That tour took five years offa my life.) But he’s mighty astute at knowing what people pay to see. In real life, he’s also a sweet, kind soul, who, when we got back to West Virginia, took the money he’d earned and payed his best friend’s overdue electric bill, got his niece’s goods at the pawnshop out of hock, and bought presents for all his grandnephews & special kid friends. I spent some time in WV among his “hillbilly” community, and the best part was seeing how everyone stuck together and was generous with the little bit they had. That’s not to gloss over all the serious (especially substace abuse) problems, but it was truly a warm community that would give you everything they had to offer.
As a child growing up in the inner city, it was made clear to me that there was just one generation between me and the yodeling crew. And to prove it, they brought me down to Alabama for a week every summer to get in touch with my roots. There’s hillbillies, alright. You’ve got my guarantee.
I was a Chicagoan, as were the younger of my mother’s siblings. My uncle Billy, however, never adapted to city living. My mother seemed as yankee as anybody, but she never would admit it. Everyone else in the family was a hillbilly, and called themselves such. The yankee/hillbilly tension was a source of good-natured mocking.
There were a lot of hillbillies in Uptown. There were also some people from Indiana who were hard to distinguish from hillbillies. They had the same ways about them, and they didn’t mind being called hillbillies. It seemed to me at the time that outside Chicago, out beyond the acres and acres of car dealerships, lay the hinterlands, and anyone from there was a hillbilly.
But again, I’ve met real hillbillies, and I found them interesting. But I don’t care to be one of them. My Aunt Magdeline made breakfast for 20 people every morning before she went off to work – a pile of biscuits, cured ham, bacon, sausage gravy, chocolate gravy, greats, corn beans and god knows what else I never bothered with. The kids in the overalls with no shirts on would come running in from their shacks, barefoot. They wiped their feet, and sat down to say their grace. Where I come from, you pray with your hands flat against eachother, just like those plaster praying hands you get in northern homes. The hillbillies laced their fingers together to make a ball of their fists.
Every home had a CB radio, and a porch swing. I saw one home where the CB radio was accessible from the porch swing. Usually, there’d be a small bookshelf that had a bible, a copy of Dragon Riders of Pern, and an assortment of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books.
When my mother moved the family to Alabama just before I started high school, we lived in a one-room building that had a bathroom built onto the side as an afterthought. It didn’t flush so well on days when it hadn’t been raining, since we didn’t have what they called `city water’ out that far. There was a well with a pump. It was running water, at least. When winter came, we had no radiator. We had to buy wood to put in the fireplace, not so we could roast marshmallows but just so we could manage to sleep at night.
About that time I found out that hillbillies don’t drink shine and fire off their shotguns anymore. They blow grass and fire off their shotguns. And there weren’t a lot of Ellie Mae’s around. Most of the girls were big-haired metalheads. Neither did I meet anybody I recognized from Thunder Road, except for the old guys. They were right out of the movie.
Does that answer anybody’s question?
Do they still EXIST?? Hell yes, try the mountains of NC where I live…like Robbinsville where Nell was filmed. Hillbilly Central.
Along with Rory Kennedy’s documentary, if you’d like to see a different area of Appalachian hillbillies, see Barbara Kopple’s documentary, Harlan County, USA. It is very good. They are slightly different than the East Tennessee hillbillies I live around but some of the same qualities still exist.
ruadh, I asked that very question in this thread, but didn’t get much of a response.
I had always heard the same explanation you mentioned. Supposedly, there were a lot of Bills and Williams in the mountains because the Ulster Scots who settled there were supporters of William of Orange.
I read a book not too long ago called The Coffin Quilt by Ann Rinaldi-yes, she rights young adult-but it’s all historical fiction and boy, does she do her research!
Anyway, the story was told in first person, by Fanny McCoy, younger sister of Rosemary McCoy, one of the couple who started the Hatfields vs McCoy feud. It’s really fascinating.
Also, funny this thread appeared now, as I’m re-reading Catherine Marshall’s Christy.
Interested parties should check out a book called “The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies, Hicks, and White Trash Became America’s Scapegoats.” It’s funny, smart, and sharply points out (as the above thread has done much to confirm) that “America’s dirty little secret isn’t racism but classism.” Jim Goad uses this text to explain the history of “redneck” America, with roots in indentured servitude, and uses harsh language to expose the reality of who’s really viewed as the lowest of the low. Want to find a group that has no representation…look no further than the “hillbillies” America loves to poke fun at.
In a day where every minority group in the country is screaming for more rights, more “equality”, and more representation, it’s sad that there’s one sect just quietly continuing to plug away with hard work and determination, while Jeff Foxworthy laughs all the way to the bank.
yeags wrote:
While it’s true that there’s still no one you can make fun of as safely as poor rural whites, and that’s not really fair, I don’t really want to have to start getting sensitive about this too. Eventually, I’ll have to be, because you’re not alone in complaining about this, and sooner or later the thought police are going to put the screws on.
As for Jeff Foxworthy and his hixploitation empire, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I was working at a book store when the You Might Be A Redneck If… books started coming out, and I’m here to tell you that most of the people buying them were rednecks. There was always a cluster of them by the display, laughing and pointing fingers at eachother. Were they co-opting the values of their oppressors, as the sensitivity police would say? I think they were just having fun.
Moonshine definitely still exists. I had some about a year ago. There’s a certain bar in a certain city in a very rural part of western Oklahoma… meet the guy inside and give him your money - the next day drive by the bar. if there is a rock on top of the the airconditioning unit on the side of the bulding your shine is behind the unit. $15 for a big mason jar (quart?) and $25 for two. Each jar comes wrapped in the sales circulars of a Sunday paper and those are put in a paper sack. As a recovering alcoholic I can give a well qualified opinion that it was GOOD STUFF! About 110 proof, crystal clear, and tasted great. As far as hillbilly know-how go to Amazon (or other book retailer) and check out “The Foxfire Books” - I actually own a few of these and they are really good.
Having lived for a while in extreme western Arkansas I don’t know of any actual ‘hillbillies’ as much as I do people that are just poor. These people live in trailers or houses that they built themselves and have no running water or electricity. Suffice it to say more than a few of them also run meth labs or grow weed.
Ummm… I gotta clarify this, as I was the one who drove Hasil on this tour, if it was the 92 Atlanta show, with Southern Culture On The Skids.
I forget the year but it was Bubbapalooza. Even though Hase only played a total of 4 songs and trashed a drum kit (sorry Earl) his offstage antics more than made up for the cover charge. My hat’s off to you sir for locking yourself in a van with him for however long. While I don’t doubt his sweetness and generosity he also displayed an enormous propensity for sudden violence.
In the late 80s, I worked in a pub in a working class, coal mining town about two hours’ drive west of Sydney, on the other side of the mountains. A ten minute drive from there was a little village whose name I won’t mention here…
This place had one dominant family. And man, did they look weird. If they weren’t inbred, something was definitely up. The only time you could see their nicotine stains was the rare occasion they had actually washed. They used to pile into their beat up old station wagon every second Saturday (after the social security money came through), and come to our pub for a few drinks. While the men drank their beer, the kids would go out the back and play with the public telephone (it was a novelty to them). But they were quiet and polite, which was more than could be said for some of the “normal” customers in that pub.
Q: What’s the definition of confusion?
A: Fathers’ Day in (name of village).
rebelyell wrote:
Bubbapalooza? My brother! The Star Bar is proof that hillbillies are alive and well.
Well, I will issue two corrections:
There is no distilling of wine typically.
IIRC, some states still do not allow homebrewing or home vinting, and I believe Arkansas is one of them.
There are still hillbillies. And hillbillies aren’t just in the mountains of TN. They’re all over the place. . .invading a Walmart near you.
I’m from rural North Carolina and here we have the flat lander’s version of hillbillies. . .rednecks.
I shall prove a point. They’re even on college campuses. I got to NCSU and let me tell you about Agriculture Awareness week. I’m not knocking my college. . .I love my college, but sometimes things get out of hand. State has not only the usual 4 year college deal, but it also has a 2 year Agricultural Institute. On Agriculture Awareness Week, I’m walking to class and what do I hear. . .Jeff Foxworthy blaring from a PA system in the brickyard. The brickyard is central to campus where the library and classes are centered around. When I get in sight of the brickyard, I see the most amazing thing I have ever seen. There is a tractor and a combine in the middle of the brickyard. There is a cow in the middle of the brick yard. And to top it all off. . .a bull riding machine. This isn’t exactly hillbilly in its purest form, but it ranks up there.
By the way. . .I shouldn’t admit this, but my mother married her 3rd cousin the first go around. My half brother is also my fourth cousin. sighs Rural living.