Tidbits

A Monthly Look At Things We Love - The Poverty Issue

JESUS THE NAVIGATOR
Outdated religious arcana like this is all over Appalachia. Is it that faith is helping the poor get through their daily struggles against adversity and hunger or is it that religion in America is the world’s first fully functional perpetual-motion machine?

THE FOOD OF THE GODS
The best fried chicken and mashed potatoes we have ever had are at Moonie’s Golden Fried Chicken in Inez, Kentucky. Just sinking your teeth into this pure Southern goodness makes you almost wish the Confederates had won. Curse their foolish pride!

WISHIN’ JUG
On the logical side of Appalachian religious devotion, we have people who understand how the universe really works. They put their faith in the power of Ye Olde Wishin’ Jug.

FOOL’S GOLD
We won’t say in whose house we found this mysterious sex tape, but we laughed and oohed-and-ahhed about it for a couple of seconds before throwing it into the VCR. Um, it wasn’t porn. It was some weird kids’ version of Gunga Din or something. Truly disturbing.

PROUD LION
This guy here was in a massive stack of drawings at the local illegal tattoo parlor. Could you imagine having him splayed permanently across your back?

TOWN MASCOT
There’s something really perverse about southeastern Kentuckians taking the classic lawn jockey format and turning it into a cute little coal miner with a smudged face and a loose belt. There are levels of unintended cultural commentary here that we have just barely begun to unravel.


NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK This was the only black guy we saw the whole time we were down there and he wasn’t fucking around. That’s an airbrushed portrait of Left Eye, Aaliyah, and Tupac on the hood of the candy-apple-red Caddy he had parked outside the motel room he was living in, which—when we glanced inside—had boxes of Nikes stacked waist-high.