When Kenny Harmon visited her grandfather Kenny for a family get together in March 2016, she tweeted a photograph of him eating a burger with the caption: “dinner with pawpaw tonight… he made 12 burgers for all 6 grandkids and I’m the only one who showed. love him.” To Kelsey’s astonishment, what was intended as a gentle dig at her brothers and cousins for not turning up went viral and her tweet was liked and retweeted around the world. Suddenly the photograph of her grandfather had become a meme. The story resonated and everybody sure did love “Sad Papaw” who soon become an internet celebrity in his own right and a figurehead for families to reconnect with their elders. SAD PAPAW’S HERITAGE shares the story of the meme and looks at the family history of Kenny Harmon tracing a line back to the days of the American West.
Although the trigger for the book was the success of the meme, SAD PAPAW’S HERITAGE is actually a very well written and researched family history that serves as an excellent historical primer for anybody interested in the real day-to-day experiences of the pioneers of the late 19th century. By tracing his forefathers’ trek west from Kentucky to Oklahoma, Harmon, assisted by co-writer Charlotte Hopkins, shines a light on the difficulties faced by every day people and how these were overcome. By focusing on just one family’s perspective the book is a useful tool to understand how things like early innovations in transport, communication and medicine helped to build America. A particularly fascinating element of SAD PAPAW’S HERITAGE comes with the inclusion of numerous heritage recipes including one for “Journey Cakes” which were fried cornmeal biscuits, useful for travelers or fieldworkers. And alongside the recipes are instructions for long forgotten children’s game such as “Duck on the Rock” and “Run Sheep Run.”
SAD PAPAW’S HERITAGE ends before the biography of “America’s favorite grandfather” really begins. This is the prehistory of Kenny Harmon and his story continues in further volumes. Revealing the roots of his life, SAD PAPAW’S HERITAGE is a very well told saga that benefits from the inclusion of a generous selection of period photographs, and makes an interesting addition to the social history of America.
Expanding on an internet meme, Kenny Harmon’s eminently readable book, SAD PAPAW’S HERITAGE, demonstrates how every individual has an interesting story to tell and that, in the telling, a wider history is revealed.
~Kent Lane for IndieReader