Let me deviated even further away from the central theme of my blog for a moment (if only slightly). I was traveling from Philadelphia to Baltimore yesterday, when I decided to indulge my ever-present biscuit craving and patronize my favorite of McDonaldized interstate road-purveyors: Cracker Barrel. For those of you who may never have eaten at a Cracker Barrel restaurant, imagine your local, homogenous, transnationally-corporatized, cookie-cutter eatery with a Southern twist; layered with ‘country’ signifiers (from the blaring bluegrass and gospel music to the service workers’ ‘overalls’) and serving only the finest selections of regional fare (collard greens, biscuits and gravy, and chicken & dumplins).

I grew up poor in rural Appalachia, in a very small mountain town called Cosby, Tennessee. I was enrolled in split grades throughout most of my elementary school education (meaning our school had neither enough teachers, classrooms, or students to fill-out ‘the second grade’ and so on); and I can still remember many of the residual ‘hillbilly’ customs my grandparents and great-grandparents shared with me as a child.