Mini-memes, many meanings: Smoking dirt boy and the congee line bros

Children are smoking in two of my favorite images from our digital collections. One of them comes from the eleven days in 1964 that William Gedney spent with the Cornett family in Eastern Kentucky. A boy, crusted in dirt, clutching a bent-up Prince Albert can, draws on a cigarette. It’s a miniature of mawkish masculinity …