Mountain People in a Flat Land
A Popular History of Appalachian Migrants to Northeast Ohio, 1940-1965
Ohio University Press, 1997
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In the early 1940s, ten dollars bought a bus ticket from Appalachia to a better job and the promise of prosperity in the flatlands of northeast Ohio. A mountainer with a strong back and will to work could find a job within twenty-four hours of arrive in Ashtabula, Ohio. But the cost of the bus ticket went beyond a week’s wages in a lumber camp or coal mine, for the mountaineer paid dearly in loss of kin, culture, homeplace, and freedom.
This is their story of their success and loss, the joy of “getting ahead” and grief of the price paid.