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from Ashland, and he wrote stories about his neighbors around W Hollow, as well as poems and books that were very popular, es- pecially in the 1940s and '50s. His stories told the people who lived along the Appala- chian crest that their lives mattered. "In the middle of the last century Jesse Stuart was, in my opinion, without a doubt, the most widely read author in America," Gifford says. And he understands why. To Gifford as he was growing up in Tennes- see, and to others like him, Dick and Jane were foreigners from a strange world where mothers wore high heels and fathers carried briefcases. Stuart's stories were Gifford's first encounter with literature that reflected his life back to him. "Stuart restored dignity to our culture," Gifford says. "What I find in Stuart is someone who wrote about a way of life I understood and identified with." Stuart's work helped bridge a gap that separated the world from Appalachia and Appalachia from the world. But those divi- sions nationally and in the commonwealth run deep, Gifford says, born of the faction- alism of the Civil War era and nourished in the years that followed. When he teaches, he devotes a semester to the topic. "First and factually, the people of Appalachia did not receive a proportionate share of funding after the Civil War. Tat's an easily docu- mentable fact and one reason our area is so poor," he says. As a result, the region lagged omy, their number, per capita — accord- ing to my casual observation — exceeding that of all other visible revenue sources. On the loneliest stretch of county road, one is never far from an opportunity to quick- roast. Take the town of Do Stop, not much more than a crossroads 40 miles west of Elizabethtown. Of the hundreds of Ken- tucky towns with fanciful names, Do Stop is one of the few that is more than a dot on the map. Tere is nothing in Eighty-Eight. Monkey's Eyebrow hosts no commerce. Hippo is less than a ghost of whatever spir- it prompted people to name it anything. But Do Stop has two tanning salons. Tammy Bratcher Nash works at the Do Stop gas station/convenience store/tanning emporium. Years ago — probably back in the 1940s — the man who owned the store at this location would stand at the side of the road beseeching passing drivers, "Do stop! Do stop!" Tus, the town was named. Or that's the story Nash was told. Do Stop may feel like a world away from Louisville, but there are still strong con- nections to the city. "Half my family lives there," Nash says. I ask Nash's coworker, Esther Logsdon, what she thinks of the city. "My opinion — are you familiar with Leitchfield? I would rather go to Louisville than go to Leitchfield," Logsdon says. "I think people in Leitchfield are snotty and "I've never been anywhere. But if it's a big town, I don't want anything to do with it." — Verlina Greenhill of Squirrel Hollow in infrastructure, in education and in all the other measures of prosperity. But even beyond those divisions, Eastern Kentucky is simply a different world. It is rural. It is slower. It is easier. Te people who live here prefer all of those things. And Gif- ford is no exception. "I feel like I live in a place where being a neighbor means something different than it does in Louisville or Lexington, something more than the house next to yours," he says. "It's more beautiful in spirit than it is in its external. In their heart, these are some of the most beautiful people in the world, dear and sweet and good." A nd maybe tanned. Although rural Kentuckians don't seem especially bronzed, tanning salons appear to fuel significant portions of the rural econ- [68] LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 7.12 they look down their nose at people, and I just don't think people should feel that way." We just came from Leitchfield, about 16 miles east of Do Stop, and although we were asked to leave Sonny's Barber Shop — the only place in the state where people declined to talk to me — everyone else was friendly and chatty, and they generally liked Louisville, even if they are occasion- ally suspicious of its political reach. Leitchfield and surrounding Gray- son County are proudly Republican, so Democrats make them nervous anyway. "When (Democratic Gov. Steve) Beshear took over, it was just like the money dried up," says Teresa Armstrong, who sells ad- vertisements at the Grayson County News Gazette. Former Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson's move to Frankfort as lieuten- ant governor will further hurt Grayson, says Jim Smith, another ad salesperson. "I don't think Abramson should have taken that position. I don't think it's good for us. He has too many ties with Louisville. He would show a lot more favoritism to that area," Smith says. But does a lieutenant governor have that much power? I ask the name of the lieuten- ant governor before Abramson. Conversa- tion stops. We look at one another blankly. It was Daniel Mongiardo, but I couldn't re- member either, so faint is a lieutenant gov- ernor's imprint. alking to Tom Chaney is like getting on Interstate 65 to go to Nashville, hop- ping off to make a quick side trip to check out a three-legged cow you thought you saw, and getting distracted by some- thing down the first side road — and every one thereafter. And, by the way, you never get to Nashville. Or find the cow. We're in Horse Cave, in the bookstore Chaney operates — possibly the only book- store with a floor stained with kangaroo pee, he says — and he is explaining how Louisville figures into state political power. "Te alliances within the Democratic party, you've got Western Kentucky, and you've got Eastern Kentucky, and Louisville provides the ballast," he begins. Chaney's full beard makes his round face appear even rounder. He dresses like a farmer come to town for the day, in clean denim overalls. A trained actor, there is nothing country about his dic- tion. His sentences are curlicued with asides, side trips, quotes and funny stories that you suspect he's told before yet do not mind. "From my first awareness of Kentucky politics in the '40s and '50s, the weight of Louisville was always significant," Chaney begins. He starts to tell about Wilson Wyatt, Louisville's mayor from 1941 to '45, sud- denly lights upon A.B. "Happy" Chandler, the governor from 1935 to '39 and 1955 to '59, and ricochets off in a new direction. I learn that Chaney was a founder of the ambitious Horse Cave Repertory Teater in 1977, that he opened the bookstore with his sister and brother-in-law when, he likes to say, his sister called him and said, "It's time to open a bookstore — a new family has moved into town, and one of them can read." I learn that Chaney has twice been the subject of New Yorker stories by Calvin Trillin, and that the second story, published in 1984, tells the tale of Chaney's attempt at agricultural profitability on his aunt's farm. Te marijuana crop he planted led to his arrest and three-month stay in "the fed- eral resort," as Chaney calls it. And I learn he once procured a country ham for Julia Child, who declared it "very hammy." I also learn his mother's recipe for ham, which he T