More like Arkansas teeth.
Posted on 12/24/2007 7:18:58 PM PST by neverdem
BARBOURVILLE, Ky. — In the 18 years he has been visiting nursing homes, seeing patients in his private practice and, more recently, driving his mobile dental clinic through Appalachian hills and hollows, Dr. Edwin E. Smith has seen the extremes of neglect.
He has seen the shame of a 14-year-old girl who would not lift her head because she had lost most of her teeth from malnutrition, and the do-it-yourself pride of an elderly mountain man who, unable to afford a dentist, pulled his own infected teeth with a pair of pliers and a swig of peroxide.
He has seen the brutal result of angry husbands hitting their wives and the end game of pill-poppers who crack healthy teeth, one by one, to get dentists to prescribe pain medications.
But mostly he has seen everyday people who are too busy putting food on the table to worry about oral hygiene. Many of them savor their sweets, drink well water without fluoride and long ago started ruining their teeth by chewing tobacco and smoking.
Dr. Smith has a rare window on a state with the highest proportion of adults under 65 without teeth, where about half the population does not have dental insurance. He struggles to counter the effects of the drastic shortage of dentists in rural areas and oral hygiene habits that have been slow to change.
“The level of need is hard to believe until you see it up close,” said Dr. Smith, who runs a free dental clinic at a high school in one of Kentucky’s poorest counties. He also provides free care to about half of the patients who visit his private practice in Barbourville.
Kentucky is among the worst states nationally in the proportion of low-income residents served by free or subsidized dental clinics, and less...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
They'd get in those cars, stuff in the kids, stuff in some of their belongings and head North to Louisville, Cincinnati, Dayton, Springfield, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, South Bend, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee ~ wherever, until they ran out of gas.
Million and a half folks ended up in strange, distant, Northern cities, and that's where they got help from folks like my mom and dad.
We had "shoe drives" ~ collecting old shoes for the kids who had no shoes ~ or socks. There were sock drives. There were shirt drives. I went to school in winter with kids who were fresh up from Harlan and Hazard who had no coats, so there were coat drives.
You might want to romanticize living off in the mountains, free with nature all about you, but you still 'gotta eat, your children need milk, everybody needs clothes, shoes, belts, hats, winter coats, K2 for the heater, a heater for the K2, tarpaper for the shack they let you built out back on the "second lot" ~
Christmas came to our house, and the houses of most the native Hoosiers in Central Indiana in two ways ~ first there were the poor migrants to be taken care of, then there was the family.
And I never knew a person who did not in some way help the migrants ~ either to survive, or to settle.
Anyway, Merry Christmas.
Their teeth will still rot!
Yessirree, know all about that myself.
Interesting. My father grew up in Upper Michigan where my grandfather was a copper miner. The mines ran out there too, and his family had to move to Detroit to seek employment. I thoroughly sympathize with anyone who's lost a job and gone deep into debt...I've been there. But this country has so many opportunities to get out of debt. And one of them might be leaving ones beautiful, beloved area and moving to the big city. Thank God that option is available.
No dental problems in New York. Lets pile on Kentucky, that redneck Southern state.
Yup, as a Kentuckian, I’m used to the piling on. I live 15 miles southeast of the city cited in the original article, Barbourville, and things are nowhere near as bad as reading this would lead one to believe.
Yes, there are still a few backroads and “hollers” where you can find the stereotypical hillbilly, but this breed is dying out fast. Broadband is finally penetrating even the most remote of locations, everyone has a cellphone glued to their ear just like anywhere else, and many make a decent to excellent living via any number of factories in the area and service and tourism related jobs.
People drive nice cars, even ...*gasp*...Porsches, Dodge Vipers and other pricey sports cars and SUVs. No one I know listens to Bluegrass—and I know a lot of people from here to Harlan to Hazard—despite every documentary about the area having a damn banjo picking along in the background as the score.
Yes, there are dentists, and plenty of them. I have a nice set of teeth myself, as do most I know. Sure, you can find the occasional person who doesn’t much care to see a dentist, but I’d say that is true most anywhere.
People love to mock those that live in this area as being ignorant, but the ignorance I see as regards their knowledge of my home in the hills is astounding. I guess it isn’t their fault, as the media and Hollywood continue to perpetrate the stereotype.
I seriously doubt that statement.I know the NYT’s good friend Dan Rather would spin that and say it was metaphorically true (fake but accurate). In the end he would say we didn’t really mean people would starving when we said people were starving. I think that any new organization that implies people are starving should support the statement or shut up.
When my children were growing up they had several friends who had never seen a dentist. Their parents had cable and went out to eat. Having cable was more important than having their kids see a dentist. For many, it’s a matter of choice - not money.
And we don’t have dental insurance. The article mentions it as if it were a human right. We pay as we go. That’s what we did when I was a kid and that’s what we do now.
In Kennedys' Teeth, Toll of Poverty and Neglect
BINGO.
I live on the Kentucky/Tennessee border (eastern). And I have teeth.
However, that mentality (people who would rather live in poverty than move away where there are opportunities) is prevelant here. Lots of folks here depend on govt. handouts from cradle to grave, generation after generation.
Both my grandpas were coal miners (one working in eastern Va. and one in Harlan County KY.) when the opportunity came up to work on the Manhatten Project. The govt. actually recruited coal miners, because they were clannish, isolated, didn’t have contact with others outside their local area. Many opted to stay in poverty.
Both my grandpas left the coal mines to work on the MP. It changed their, and their childrens’ live tremendously.
This is a good time to retell the story I read in a local newspaper here once. Seems a woman called police on her husband, after he caught her in bed with another man. They were looking for him because he took the woman’s false teeth and hid them from her. She was reported in the newspaper to be 23 years old I believe. (True story).
If you’d like to be on or off this Upper Midwest/outdoors/rural list please FR mail me. And ping me is you see articles of interest.
I have seen both extremes here in Central Kentucky. I think there is something to “good” teeth being hereditary. Mrs SLB and I have five children ages 33 to 16 and all have great teeth, yes there were some braces, in fact the youngest and the oldest are now seeing the same orthodontist. Mrs SLB has great teeth, but I have some of the worst teeth known to man. My mother had lousy teeth and every dentist I have seen say that to some extent it is hereditary. I still have my own teeth, but am no stranger to root canals and crowns, so maybe they are not really all my own.
In 1990/1991 during Desert Shield/Storm I worked with deploying several Kentucky National Guard units. The one major problem making soldiers “non-deployable” was dental problems. At first the dentists either tried to repair the problems or simply sent the soldier home to be replaced by another. Eventually the manpower pool started to dwindle so the word was put out to start extracting bad teeth. Many soldiers had four, five or even more teeth pulled and then were deployed to the Mid East.
Mark, I lived in Kentucky for six years, Ft Campbell, Ft Knox and Frankfort. I love the state and consider it my other home. Being a native Southerner, I too am used to the crude comments and stereotyping found in the media. I can only chalk it up to jealousy and envy. In the case of the Slimes, likely penis envy.
“Seems like this Christmas brought out the worst in some of us.”
I visit this site daily, and can assure you that the uglyness is always lurking.
“and the end game of pill-poppers who crack healthy teeth, one by one, to get dentists to prescribe pain medications.”
Oh geez! These people are crazy! I’ve been on oxycodone since June and am almost off. The problems with taking them are worse than the feel good you get.
Well, God bless them. If the lights ever go out these will be some of the only folks left. From your wealth of compassion you must live in one of those big northeastern hives right?
Of course, being a descendant of some Tennessee hill people I’m biased.
“Seems like this Christmas brought out the worst in some of us.”
Some Freepers think Ebenezer Scrooge is a capitalist role model.
If I had to make a choice between my teeth and freedom, I’ll take freedom, every time.
“I could now make a rifle, barrel, stock and all”
One of my Dad’s black powder buddies in Tennessee made his own barrels (and rifled them), locks, stocks, etc. He turned me on to forging knives.
More like Arkansas teeth.
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