Hillbilly Thomists
I grew up in the Midwest. My folks were both well-educated people. In fact, both were Phi Beta Kappa – a standard to which I failed to ascend – and my father was a professor and department chairman at THE Ohio State University. The Miners and my mom’s people, the Earnharts, were all Buckeyes, unto the fourth generation. I’m the only Catholic.
Ohio is not Kentucky. Think of Ohio and maybe you think of the Rust Belt. Think of the Bluegrass State and you may think of the South, although Kentucky was not secessionist during the Late Unpleasantness, despite the fact that the sympathies of many Kentuckians leaned that way.
Anyway . . . Bluegrass music (hereafter capitalized to distinguish it from the stuff that carpets lawns and grows on the infield at Churchill Downs) also apparently evokes the South. And that’s about half right because Bluegrass is Appalachian; if you look at a map you’ll see that Appalachia is pretty much bisected by the old Mason-Dixon line, except there’s actually a bit more of it in the North. West Virginia, you know, is northern, as are Western Pennsylvania, Eastern Ohio, and Southern New York.