Kentucky's Last Barefoot Generation: Growing up off the Grid for Real Hardcover – March 31, 2026

Ever wonder what it was like to grow up on a small farm in central Kentucky during the 1940s and 50s — a time when children shed their shoes at the first signs of spring, attended one-room schools, doctors made house calls, and the new fall Sears and Roebuck catalog was more exciting than Christmas morning?Kentucky's Last Barefoot Generation invites readers into that world through the eyes of a boy who lived it. Paul was part of the last generation in America to attend a one-room schoolhouse — and to do so barefoot whenever the weather allowed.With deep roots in Appalachia and raised truly off the grid, Paul and his siblings began working at an early age. They used horses to tend the Burley tobacco patch, milked cows before school, made their own toys, explored nearby woodlands, and swam in muddy creeks and ponds.Through humor and vivid true-life stories, this memoir offers heartfelt insight into the daily lives of children and parents as they struggled together to scratch out a living without electricity, indoor plumbing, television, or other modern conveniences such as telephones, washing machines, or the internet. Life was measured by planting and harvest, hog-killing time, school pie suppers that nearly bankrupted rival suitors, and the hope that this year’s tobacco crop would be enough to settle the family’s debts and buy seed for the next season.Sending for the doctor was a last resort after home remedies — kerosene mixed with sugar, liberal rubbings of Vicks VapoRub, and generous doses of castor oil — failed to accomplish a cure. Often, just the threat of these remedies was enough to keep children from pretending to be sick to miss school.Kentucky's Last Barefoot Generation is both a tribute to and a record of a vanishing America — a time when supper came from the garden, heat from a wood stove, light from a coal-oil lamp, whippings at school often meant another at home, and wash day began by building a fire beneath a tub of water.This book is over 300 pages providing hours of entertaining and historically significant reading. Perfect for readers who enjoy true-life stories of mid-20th-century rural America, one-room schools, and the important role children played in helping their families survive and thrive.If you remember those days, this book will take you home.If you don’t, it will open a window into a way of life very different from today — and likely the world your grandparents knew.“The stories are reminiscent ofLittle House on the Prairie, but with a Southern twist.”— Dr. John Vile, Dean of the Honors College, Middle Tennessee State University. Read more