A Hillbilly Grows Up: Boyhood Adventures In Rural Kentucky

Darrel Campbell grew up so dirt-poor in a hardscrabble mining town in eastern Kentucky that he was thirteen years old before he used an indoor toilet for the first time. Like most boys his age, Campbell’s days consisted of chores to keep the family clothed and fed. But when the work day ended, he and his friends ran wild in the Appalachian foothills, shooting squirrels and birds, pulling pranks, and causing as much mischief as possible. Despite the poverty and violence so prevalent in the region, Campbell recalls the hardships of his childhood without self-pity and with plenty of humor. What he and his friends lacked in expensive toys or fancy clothes, they made up for with imagination and grit—traits that would eventually carry Campbell through high school and college—and out of poverty. A funny, moving glimpse into Appalachia in the 1940s and 50s, A Hillbilly Grows Up tells not only the story of one young boy and his family, but describes the social fabric that held small towns together across a region riddled with deprivation and scarcity. Readers will shake their heads and wonder how Campbell survived his childhood—but will be awfully glad he did.