Bill Clinton campaigns in the town of Hillbilly Days

Signs and stereotypes stood out when former President Bill Clinton came to Pikeville, Ky., the heart of Central Appalachia, yesterday in his wife's presidential campaign.

Reflecting the town's upcoming Hillbilly Days festival and recent observations that Hillary Clinton is relying on a "hillbilly firewall" of Appalachian Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky to keep her in the race, one supporter held up this sign, in a Lexington Herald-Leader photo by Randy Snyder.

Clinton pointed out another sign: "I'm for the woman," and said "That's a pretty good one. I like that," Herald-Leader reporter Cassondra Kirby writes. "Several in the crowd of more than 3,000 -- including construction workers, steelworkers and coal miners still in their uniforms -- said they will do something in this election they never thought they would: vote for a woman."

Clinton knew his crowd, as Kirby reports:

Clinton promised that "she won't forget what you look like" -- she won't forget the poor and the working middle-class.

When you become president, he said, it's easy to get caught up in the job -- "to think you are somebody." The president zips along in a bulletproof limo, hears Hail to the Chief and has an airplane so cool that movies are made about it, Bill Clinton said.

"But the president is nothing more than the most fortunate public servant," he said. "Hillary won't forget that."

Russ Cassady of the daily Appalachian News-Express in Pikeville reports:

Clinton also touched on a topic important to Eastern Kentucky — energy — promising that Hillary Clinton would make the country energy independent with clean forms of energy that will create jobs here.

“This is the only strategy that will bring jobs to every state, to every rural area, to every small town, to every suburb and to every city,” Bill Clinton told the crowd.