By Judy Owens

Is Presidency in Obama's Genes?

editor — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:26:24 -0700

Barack Obama in a swirl of distant cousins, (from top left) Dick Cheney, HRH Queen Elizabeth II, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, and Ruby Dee
Graphic: Daily Yonder

A Kentucky genealogist has traced Sen. Barack Obama’s heritage to one of the founding families of the nation, a Revolutionary War patriot named James Lewis Hickman.

Obama’s shared ancestry with American colonists may be a surprise to those who have been focusing on Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., Obama’s Kenyan father. But historical records prove that Obama has as much in common with the Kentucky frontier of Daniel Boone as he does with East Africa.

Eric James discovered the connection when he was researching his own family tree, which sprouted such notables as the notorious James gang. While investigating some New England ancestors, he noted that Barack Obama was related to George Bush. Research shows that Obama and Bush are linked through a 17th century Massachusetts couple named Samuel Hinckley and Sarah Soole.

“Hum,” James said. “When I saw that, I thought, well, I’m kin to Bush too. I just wonder if there could be a connection.”

Out of the Mouths of Bubbas: Red State Update

editor — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 10:16:56 -0700

Jackie (left, Travis Harmon) and Dunlap (Jonathan Shockley) hold forth three times weekly as Red State Update
Photo: Travis and Jonathan.com

As the presidential campaigns rumble toward November, there has been no let-up from the lampooning by Red State Update, the YouTube and MySpace sensation whose four-star ratings have propelled them onto CNN, USA Today and a new CD.

For the uninitiated, Red State Update is a little difficult to define. It’s something like Hee Haw meets The Daily Show. Or a white rural version of Sanford and Son. Or Larry the Cable Guy talking with an older friend about politics.

Red State Update stars “Jackie Broyles” and “Dunlap” sitting behind a week’s worth of empty Budweiser cans, a few fifths of Jack Daniels and, in the background, other talisman of the South: The Tennessee State Flag, hanging right next to Old Glory. They say they’re broadcasting from Jackie’s barbecue/general store in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. In reality, the show comes from California, and the performers are Travis Harmon and Jonathan Shockley. Harmon grew up in Murfreesboro and Shockley attended college there at Middle Tennessee State University.

Hot Dog! Linking Down Highway 25E

editor — Fri, 4 Jul 2008 13:47:45 -0700

Weaver's in London, Kentucky, has served hot dogs to more than one governor
(and nobody holds that against them)
Photo: Judy Owens

Hot dogs are the single-handed starch rocket that signals Fourth of July like no other food. Right off the lowly street vendor's cart, in the stands at the baseball game, and at parking-lot carnivals that spring up during the summers in rural America, the hot dog is the great equalizer. The hot dog was also the veritable wiener-baton passed from George Bush to John McCain when, within 24 hours of McCain's earning the Republican presidential nomination, President Bush invited the Arizona Senator to the White House to share a hot dog lunch.

Hot dogs are a blank slate upon which the diversity of our nation is inscribed. New Yorkers like the brusque and straightforward spicy mustard and kraut atop their dogs. Cincinnati prefers to pump up the fat amperage with its cheese-coated Coney. Kansas City melts Swiss cheese over the dog and tops it with kraut, homage to its popular Reuben sandwich. On the west coast, Seattle slathers its dogs with cream cheese and dots it with green onions.

So in this time of stay-cations, I withdrew $100 from the ATM, used $70 of it to fill up my car, and pocketed the remaining $30 to take a historic trek down U.S. 25E in southeastern Kentucky in search of my own people’s native dog.

Conley’s Drive In is tucked away behind the Commercial Bank at the intersection of U.S. 25E and Cumberland Avenue in Middlesboro, KY. Mr. and Mrs. Scott Conley opened their burger and ice cream stand in 1960. I remember many summer afternoons visiting my friend Elaine Lambert’s house, walking down the street to Conley’s with $2 and bringing back a white sack full of hot dogs, waiting in orderly stacks of white ruffled cardboard and crisp gauzy cellophane.

The Class of '08: Less Pomp, More Circumstance

editor — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:46:18 -0700

The author receiving her Middlesboro (KY) High School diploma from school board chairman Jimmy Jackson, 1974
Photo: Courtesy of Judy Owens

If I could get past "Arches of Roses," I knew I could make it through my nephew Jon’s high school graduation last month without choking up.

"Arches of Roses" was a slow, sentimental farewell sung as Middlesboro High School seniors marched into the auditorium at the beginning of their graduation ceremony. Junior girls in long formal dresses and white gloves held arches wrapped with gold and white ribbon and covered with roses. This was our ritual when I graduated in 1974 and at my mother’s ceremony in 1952.

As it turns out, my hankie was safe in my purse. "Arches of Roses" had been cast off; now Middlesboro students march in to "Pomp and Circumstance" like everybody else. The discarded processional was just the first change I noticed that day, and in some ways, the differences say a great deal about how rural towns across America have changed.

The number of Middlesboro graduates had visibly declined since my graduation. In 1970 the U.S. Census counted 12,169 people within the city limits; by 2000, Middlesboro had lost more than 15 percent of its citizens. Jon’s high school class was even smaller than would be accounted for by the drop in population. Middlesboro Class of 2008 had about 110 students. The Class of 1974 had 173.

Reporters Looking for Stories, Finding Wampus Cats

editor — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 06:53:21 -0700

A six-legged wampus cat is the mascot of the Conway High School in Arkansas.

Photo: timdstone

If my father were alive to read the June 8 edition of the British newspaper The Guardian, he’d laugh and say that reporter Paul Harris had been taken out to hunt wampus cats.

Wampus cats were born of Cherokee mythology, a wild woman/mountain lion beast that haunted the hills. Somewhere in the telling of the wampus cat legend, my daddy combined it with the infamous snipe hunt. My daddy loved nothing better than to take a know-it-all visitor from Detroit or Chicago a mile or two into the woods, hand him a grass sack, tell him to bend over and hold it open.

“I’m just going over the ridge here, and I’ll herd ‘em to you,” my daddy would say in the retelling of it. “You just stand right there and hold the sack.”

Tears would stream down his face; he laughed so hard, thinking about how silly city people are to think a wild animal would kamikaze into a grass sack. The funniest rubes were those who stood there an hour or two before realizing they were the butt of a joke.

Poor Paul Harris. He’s still standing there, holding that grass sack and waiting for the wampus cat.