When Jeff Adkins delivered his acceptance speech for an award he earned a few years ago as a science teacher in California, he may not have realized at the time that he would eventually parlay that speech into a book about his life as a high school kid in 1970s Eastern Kentucky.
But that’s exactly what happened, and the result is a rich, interesting, sometimes humorous, and oftentimes relevant narrative that tells life’s underdogs with earnestness and a sense of pride that everyone has worth, no matter their station.
Adkins, who was raised in the Viper community of Perry County, completed his book about two years ago from his home in Antioch, California, just east of San Francisco, where he teaches physics and astronomy at a local high school and college. Though he noted during a recent telephone interview that he changed the names of the characters in his story, he estimated that between 70 to 80 percent of the narrative of The Boy Who Skipped is derived directly from his own experiences, which would land it squarely in the same genre as Homer Hickam’s Rocket Boys, the book that eventually became the feature film October Sky.
In fact, Adkins noted that he wrote Hickam for advice, and got a response.
“He said, ‘be brave, use real names,’” Adkins remembered of Hickam’s advice. “But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it because I was having people say things they didn’t really say, and I thought, well, I’m just going to play it safe. Most people who read it don’t need to know who it really is.”
The Boy Who Skipped centers on Jeff Mason (Adkins’ literary alter ego), a gifted seventh grader (though he will tell you early on that he wasn’t nearly as gifted as he was educated) about to round out the school year when school administrators allow him to “skip” his eighth grade year and enroll one orbit early at Colonel Devitt H. Caudill Memorial High School, a thinly veiled, fictitious version of the former Dilce Combs High School which Adkins attended in real life.
It was Adkins’ experience in Carols Combs’s drama program from which the author draws his material that serves as the story’s anchor, and around which the narrative revolves. He said it was a credit to Ms. Combs during his aforementioned acceptance speech that eventually gave him the inspiration to put his memories to paper.
Ms. Combs is replaced in the book by Cheryl Caudill, a drama coach who assumes that her students can and will do their best. She expects as much, and gets it. And that’s as far as Adkins was willing to go in revealing during a recent telephone interview on whom his characters were based in real life.
Jeff Mason’s first experience on the stage sees the gifted student in a production of “The Taming of the Shrew,” where he first meets Lyn Adnerson, a senior whom he falls for quickly.
Mason eventually thrives in drama and is part of a production that goes on to compete for the state title on stage at the University of Kentucky, going up against the bigger programs in Louisville and Lexington, and even some local competition with a school in Knott County.
Though a large part of Adkins’ book deals with his life as an actor on the high school stage, it’s what Miss Caudill (and Carol Combs in real life) was able to instill in her actors that really serves as the main thrust of the story.
“She challenged us,” Adkins said of his former drama coach. “She made us realize that we could be capable of doing excellent work that would stand up anywhere, and showed us that hard work can pay off.”
Adkins noted that writing his story was cathartic for him because it enabled him to return to his roots in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, where he comes back to visit at least once a year. And he was quick to add that the lessons he learned from Carol Combs are the same lessons he applies today with his own students.
“I started realizing that the biggest thing holding my students back was me,” he said. “When I expected them not to do well, for whatever excuse I made up , they didn’t. When I expect them to do well, I get better results, and she taught me that.”
What Adkins was able to accomplish with his book is something worthy. Not only does he manage to relay an uncertain time in his life and weave together a formidable narrative that stands up to Rocket Boys and lends to the genre, but this book stands on its head the notion that geography dictates one’s lot in life.
In its essence, The Boy Who Skipped serves as a poignant recollection of life in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky in the late 1970s that is relevant in today’s society, especially for those who feel that there isn’t much for them outside of the mountains.
A press release on The Boy Who Skipped describes the story as a coming-of-age tale, and while that certainly applies, it’s also a story about what it is that makes us mountain folk the way we are. Jeff Mason may have been partly raised in Ohio, but there is still a definite Appalachian quality to the character’s home life that can easily bring to the surface the same sort of fond sentiment that many in Eastern Kentucky today may feel when looking back through their own history.
But Adkins also keeps his story free from the clutter of stereotype, and his personal connection with our region lends credibility where other authors sitting on the outside looking in may fail to include.
There are also allusions to the never-ending lack of resources that continues to plague this region, but is as much a part of its essence as the coal that flows from its hills. Who of us growing up with working class parents didn’t come to know the lack of those monetary resources that, at any minute, could derail the sort of educational progression that Jeff Mason used to thrive in school and later on in life?
There is a very fine line that many in Appalachia walk between stagnation and progression that all too easily can move one way or the other, depending on any number of factors. Adkins captured that notion of uncertainty, and told a story that many of us know all too well. It is one that ultimately tells us that despite our own misgivings, there’s a little bit of Jeff Mason in all of us, and if we’re lucky, there’s a Carol Combs out there waiting with the same expectations of excellence, and with the same drive to see that we meet those expectations.
“If I had a message for anybody,” Adkins concluded, “it would be to take advantage of the opportunities you have, and don’t make assumptions just because of where you’re from.”
The Boy Who Skipped doesn’t make assumptions, but it does deliver the kind of story that people with ties to our region can relate, and those outside of Central Appalachia can delve into without preconceived notions of stereotypical hill folk. It is a self-published tome, and in as much a reader may find the odd typo, but there is nothing there to keep its audience from simply enjoying a good story.
The Boy Who Skipped can be found online at Adkins’s website, theboywhoskipped.com, or at other book sellers such as amazon.com and lulu.com.
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