Originally Posted by http://www.marshallnews.com/story/1183109.html
I can tell you from life experience, Ozark Americans are not all straight out of the panels of a Li'l Abner comic strip or the scenes from a Ma and Pa Kettle movie. And, believe it or not, they are not all white supremacists waiting for the arm of the Lord to strike down everyone who does not look like them, talk like them, or think like them.
Most of them are -- or should I say "us?" -- are honest, hard-working folks who love life and family and God. They have a deep sense of who they are because they have a keen idea of who their parents were, and who their grandparents were, and so on. They have a rich heritage of living off the land -- not because they wanted to so much as because it was a necessity. And now that the days of depending on a garden patch and a milk cow for sustenance are over, many of them look back on memories of those days with a great fondness and tenderness.
They are also an educated lot; if not through formal education, then from pure will power and desire to gain knowledge no matter how it came. Many never finished high school, yet they are now voracious readers who learn volumes from life itself.
Many are artisans, woodcarvers, quilt makers, carpenters, log home builders (who still build them the old fashioned way), frame makers, artists, musicians, doll makers, blacksmiths, and writers. Others are entrepreneurs who have made their mark on the economics of this great nation.
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