A Long Look Back

Escaping Poverty and Cultural Captivity in Post Depression Kentucky Hills

By: Landon Perdew, Belinda Taylor, David Perdew

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Murder, Poverty, Racism, Alcoholism, Love, and Loss.

Landon Perdew saw all this and more including dangerous adventures with his wild teenage friends like bootlegging moonshine. He scratched his way out of the backwoods of Kentucky after the Depression. His destiny like so many others around him was more tough times working the land to make ends meet in the poverty-stricken Appalachian farming culture.

But he escaped to Japan as a medic in the US Air Force after World War II. There, he was exposed to educated and cultured doctors and nurses. As a high school dropout who could barely read or write, he was forced to make serious life decisions. That resulted in a serious "attitude adjustment." He gave up the prejudice and ignorance that was drilled into him in a one-room schoolhouse.

With his new life, he became a devoted husband, father, son, brother, and well-respected education administrator in the Kentucky school system. In this memoir, written as a birthday gift to his daughter Belinda, he chronicles the struggle—and reward—of building that new life.