If he experienced any of these relatively common life activities (and many more out there I'm sure) they are more difficult economically than they were 60 years ago.

Obviously it's a matter of degrees and I'm sure he wouldn't trade places with his counterpart in Yemen...but to argue that life hasn't changed for him in 60 years as an American seems a bit wrong.

These days tons of those small towns are dying. People don't care to live out there anymore. Factories keeping towns alive closed in the late 90's. Coal mines closed. Rail yards are quiet since the factories aren't receiving and shipping and the coal mines aren't moving coal. Other than some fast food chains, its almost hard to find infrastructure built since the late 80s. States like KY and WV are largely these small dying towns, not mostly big cities.

I'm not arguing that overall life in the US has gone down in 60 years or that we should be starting up the coal mines. I'm just trying to suggest Kentucky probably wasn't the best place to pick to suggest life not getting worse; for tons of people in Appalachia life has gotten worse over the last 60 years. Note, this isn't even a small town vs. big city argument, there are plenty of small towns out there that have had their own booms and due to the US tendency to sprawl our cities out places that used to be small backwater towns are now shiny new mini-cities attached to giant sprawling city regions.