Ozarkian

It was an Appalachian phrase, he said, or maybe it was Ozarkian – a saying that emerged from a hardscrabble landscape, a realm of rural poverty that always brought to my mind quilts and bonnets and hand-made brooms.

Another Ozarkian who I met after I'd been gone a long time, told me that her oldest son hadn't been accepted into the Army because he "couldn't pass mustard," but was now a "highway petroleum."