Stereotypes From My Own State

I was having a conversation with one of my friends/teammates on the baseball team, and he has the ideas that a lot of the people, including me, on the ball team are really "country". Michael Atz says, "The people of Appalachia are hard working in the fields, enjoy drinking and making moonshine, deep accents, hard to understand common people in public places, have strong opinions, and like cold weather." Well, Mr. Atz is from the Charlotte area, but his whole family is from the northern region. With this being said, I would call him a "Relocated Yankee". It is not common for people even from local metropolis areas in our own state to think that we people from the mountains are hicks, hillbillies, and many other stereotypes. As a mountaineer I take great pride in teaching these stereotypical people from the Piedmont, and Coastal Plains regions how true Appalachians are. It seems that Atz has really grown to enjoy our lifestyle and ways. He thinks that we are less stressful than the people in the big cities and other regions, and also we are very kind to new people that we come across. He enjoys being in the company of us mountaineers on the team and wouldn't trade us for anyone else. Last night, I went over to Atz's apartment where he wanted to watch the Daytona 500. Even though I am from the South I don't care for NASCAR, but he enjoys it. I told him this and he just smiled and said, "Wow, guess that stereotype isn't true either!" Through spending time with him I have also learned many new things about the way he lives and also the culture that he grew up in, which has many different ideas, but also some similarities. This is where I will take my next blog post I suppose...

The Origin of "Hillbilly"

The term hillbilly is often used as a derogatory term towards the people of the mountains who live in either the Appalachians or the Ozarks. The hillbilly is usually a person who lives in a remote, rural area in the mountains, owns a shotgun, goes barefoot, wears overalls, plays a banjo, makes moonshine and drinks it, has a large beard, poorly educated, and is content with what they have.

The origin of this term comes from the Scots-Irish in the 1700's. The people who were in North America and were against Prince William of Orange at this time were called "hillbillies". To describe the people of the mountains they combined the two words "hill-folk" and "billie", which means a companion or friend. 

Today in mainstream culture was see many hillbilly references. Like "The Beverly Hillbillies", "Moonshiners", and also Yosef, the Appalachian University mascot. Yosef is the ideal image for what hillbillies look like, even more so the older Yosef. The old Yosef had a thick black beard, floppy hat, corn pipe, and overalls.