Appalachia: The Happy Poppies Of Handshoe Holler

Majestically arrayed in an ancient blue suit, frayed white shirt and new brown boots, Floyd Handshoe, 51, la bored at a seignorial pace last week, hoeing rocks into potholes in the road. So did half a dozen other unemployed fathers of Handshoe Hollow who have enrolled in a federal make-work project known in the mountains of eastern Kentucky as the Happy Pappies. As they demonstrated the blessings of the poverty program, other local residents—mostly the pappies' wives and small children—harvested potatoes behind a mule-drawn plow on Will Handshoe's land beside Upper Quicksand...

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