Support for GPB comes from the Galloway School where students ages 3 through grade 12 are part of a community where learning is joyful, individuals are valued, and self-discovery is encouraged.

Openhouse is December 3rd.

More info at Galloway School.org. Hello friends and neighbors Chuck Reese here it's the Bitter Southerner

podcast from Georgia Public Broadcasting in the magazine I edit the

Bitter Southerner in the bitter southern.

Today, I edit, the bitter southern.

Today we're talking about Appalachia. I grew up in North Georgia mountains and that

makes me Appalachian by birth and raising and mountain people talk kind of funny I guess I have to

acknowledge that. The first time I lived in New York City back in the mid to late

80s I made friends with a guy from Detroit who once heard me say that my grandparents had grown

up in a hollow.

Now how I said that word to him of course was holler because holler was how I always said it

it's how I learned to say the word and as our friendship grew that word became

his code word for the South.

Every time I left home, he'd say,

Have fun in the holler!

And I discovered that, you know, if you make the big apple and probably any other

giant city, you're home for a while

and your roots and ways are Appalachian. The friends you make in that big city will indeed joke

with you and call you a hillbilly I think you can count on it.

I just tried not to let it fluster me. I just owned the fact that I was a hillbilly

born and bred. I mean I adapted to New York didn't ever wear my overalls out on the street I don't think but I didn't hide who I was

...