I grew up in rural West Virginia where men are men and girl cousins are for finding hiding behind the woodpile. I was a girl cousin, that's how I know. My family was real mixed, several generations, male and female, rural housing, some on wheels, mixed bag of professions, mostly blue collar. As a girl cousin when you came of age around fifteen you were fresh meat. We talked so that we knew who was looking for us and we hid from him, until he found us and we got what was coming to us. No one cared if you had sex, not even if you wound up with a kid. There were lots of kids, of all kinds and all ages, one more didn't matter much.

The cousin that went looking for me was a smart one, his father was smart and his mother made sure that her kids were his kids, so I followed her and made sure that my kids were his kids, smart is smart and having smart kids is the smart thing to do. I let myself get knocked up, maybe I made sure he knocked me up, I was sixteen and he was twenty three and had two years of college, so we started to live together. One, two and three and that's the way it was, why have one when you can have a whole passel of them. If you didn't have kids everyone knew you were either strange or you were a bitch. Kids was what it was all about.

No one believes me now, but we were happy. Sure there were some outsiders that got into our pants, and a couple of lowlanders that made it up to where we lived who came up hunting for girls. But mostly it was all in the family, cousins, and cousins and cousins. Turns out that everyone was a cousin, if he lived nearby he was a cousin. Sometimes you spent the afternoon with your best friend cousin figuring out who was the real papa.

Things changed a lot and as our kids grew up they wanted college and stuff and they left for the jobs down in the city, and married girls where one kid was one too many. We brought some of those boys back and offered up their choice in girl, but they wanted the slick ones, the kind that talked back and thought they were going to run the world. Our girls didn't have boys and our boys went for those city girls. We talked a lot about why the boys were allowed to go to college if all they were going to do was leave.

Our girls had to put up with passers by, salesmen who had nothing for them except a hot dick. We had babies and we didn't really know the papas. Things got bad then because there were lots of babies without papas. I think that is when things went bad and the kids got out of hand. A kid has to have a papa, one that isn't afraid to use his belt.

My cousin, the one that found me hiding at the church and put his kids in me, he is a true real cousin, my mother's sister's son. We are true blue, first cousins. Those are the best kind to have. I made sure that each and everyone of my girls found a real cousin, those stick around and take care of you. The passing thru type just keep passing thru and leave you high and dry with a kid or two.

Our farm is now turned into a subdivision and it's true that we sold it for way more than anyone ever thought that land was worth, but I miss it. The city caught up with us, there is a big high school with a gymnasium and a parking lot for the kids and there is a nine hole golf course up here and we have summer cabins on the river. Our girls are smart now and don't mess with anyone that isn't going to look after them, and we told the boys their cousins were theirs to keep and look after. This generation has done much better. Still the old rule applies, a real cousin is a real cousin, you know their mama and their papa. Of course girls go to college now, and some don't come back because they got themselves a boy from far away. It isn't progress, not here anyways.