Despite my (extremely) rural upbringing in the South, I didn’t necessarily hit many of the stereotypical redneck traits as a child.
I never smoked or chewed tobacco. (Though I knew 10-year-olds who did.) I didn’t live in a trailer. I never drove a tractor. Both my parents had jobs. I didn’t have sex with female relatives. Blah blah blah.
But later on I hit some of them. I lived in a trailer for a little over a year after I moved to the Midwest, for example. And despite hitting some of the spots on the NASCAR tour as a kid, that was all because my parents did it. I didn’t go of my own volition.
Well, I just got off the phone with my mother, where I proposed as a combined Christmas gift to my dad a guys’ trip for Dad, my brother, and myself to a NASCAR race. I volunteered myself. I put the idea into other peoples’ heads wheretofore there had been no such plan.
Yup. Guess I’m a redneck after all. But if we pull it off, damn will ol’ pop be happy.
Filed under: Life and other states of existence
Some have redneck thrust upon them, others thrust it upon themselves.
Actually, I think it’s a pretty damn smart thing to do. You know you’d have to do it sooner or later so, this way, you get the credit. Genius really!
Do you think other ’signs’ will begin to ‘pop up’ as you ‘age.’ When I was a kid I had a time when I was petrified I’d go all Southern on my ass. And it wasn’t even in the normal way!
My father’s mother was visiting from Durham, NC and one of the things we did was visit my father’s grave. Where she sat me on, in, and around it. Okay, that was weird enough for a city kid. It wasn’t until I went there for a visit I started checking my neck nightly.
I’m getting out of the bathroom in her room. I’m looking at the stuff on her dresser and see a picture of a guy. I didn’t recognize him but it did look odd to me. Very odd. As in dead odd.
“Nana,” I call. “Who’s this?” She comes in and tells me it’s Uncle Skeeter or some such thing.
“He looks weird.”
“He’s resting with the Lord, son.”
“Is he in a coffin?”
From that moment until I became VERY good friends with a guy from Memphis (who told it me it was, to quote, ‘a Southern thing’) I was waiting for the day when I had this overwhelming urge to become a necro-photog.
What, you never read Wisconsin Death Trip? Mortuary photography used to be super-common…hell, that’s the best portrait you ever had taken, since “shutter” speeds were so low, and that way you know you weren’t moving.
I apologize for a comment that is only tangentially related to this post, but I have found that as my dad gets older, his neck gets redder and redder. He is from the backest of back woods in Kentucky, and I think he concealed a lot of those tendencies on purpose during his marriage to my mother, who is from a blueblood North Carolina family. A few years ago, he told me he liked country music after all. Then it was NASCAR. I expect that when he moves back to the US he’s going to get a dawg. (Not a dog, mind you.) I will never go to NASCAR with him, though – I can’t imagine sitting there all day as they go round and round and round and round and round and…
Dogs have pedigrees and manicures and ride in handbags. I’d rather have a dawg.
I don’t enjoy NASCAR all that much – takes too damn long, really, I got better things to do with a weekend afternoon than spend 4 hours of it watching the same race – but to make ol’ pop happy, I can do it once or twice.
Ya’ll know what color my neck is.
Injuns are redskins, right? What color would it be? Ha! Seriously, I’m a hillbilly redneck and it has nothing to do with where I was born, but where the folks did.
I don’t say “warsh”. I draw the line there.
I wish I could still pronounce the word “outside” exactly the way I used to. I’d do it on the radio show and y’all would have a hell of a running joke for the comments.
You haven’t LIVED until you’ve driven a tractor. Over the neighbor’s lawn. And crashed into their fence. Subsequently letting their cows escape.
Srsly.
Dang. Gotta get on that one, then.
I HAVE been on a trailer being pulled behind a tractor. As said trailer disengaged from said tractor on a steep grade. And rolled downhill. And crashed into the pickup behind.
That was fun.
You cannot really be a redneck until you have put “it” to, or an immediate relative is married to, a second cousin.
You are safe…
Hmm. How immediate?
And a reminder for crisitunity, no one should start staying on topic around here now.
Topic? What topic?
MTAE, TB and I have discovered that we both have “double cousins” in our family, where two brothers married two sisters. I call that cute rather than incestuous, because it’s not blood-incestuous, but folks not from the south find it weird when I tell them.
And, by the way, I like cheese. How’s THAT for off-topic?
It works!
Cheese, my kind sir, is never off topic.
Oh, I know about mortuary photography now but put yourself in the shoes of a ten year old. It’s like looking over a family reunion and thinking,
‘Okay, my ears are going to get huge; I’ll have a penchant for the drink; I’ll specialize in still life photography.’
Could make one look up adoption counseling.
Eep. Family reunions. I’m cringing already.
Oh, and Crisitunity would probably have answered on her own if I hadn’t beaten her to it, but she’s a ma’am. Unless you’re saluting her, I suppose.
I’m a MISS, not a ma’am.
Yes, I’m kidding.
This says oodles about me, but all I can see is Leslie Easterbrook in one of those Police Academy movies saying “Yes…MA’AM!”
Sorry for the unrequested gender reassignment, Cristunity. I can see where that would be a tough thing to wake up to. I lose my keys and I freak out. I can’t imagine how you’d feel waking up after an add-a-dick-to-me.
Finally! Someone understands what I went through for those many years:
http://www.gocomics.com/lio/?ref=lio_gce_b5
“add-a-dick-to-me.” Heheheh.
It is pretty nice to whiz standing up, but I think I’d trade it for that whole multiple-orgasm thing.
You can take the boy out of the South…
That reminds me of a joke.
What’s the last thing a redneck says before he dies?
“Hey y’all, watch this!”
*wistful laugh* Yep. Poor Uncle Jeb…it was pretty funny, though.
If that isn’t true!
Nothing funnier than hearing redneck stories about their scars and how they happened…
“…I thought it wuz dead, then it bit me!”
All my scars have lame stories. I can make up some good ones, though. I’ve got prominent scars on the knuckles of both hands that lend themselves very well to fistfight stories.
Make up one about a hay baler…those are the best!!!!!
Or a corn picker. I actually had a neighbor (distant relative by marriage) get killed by one of those things. Ugh.
I don’t know, being a dude might be better…besides, I realize that it just sounded funnier to say “my good sir” even if you had known that I was a lady. Well, I’m not a lady, but you know.
“Hey, watch this” – like the guys who drove snowmobiles across a fully thawed lake? And then it became a redneck sport when not all of them died?
I think the fatality rate has to be 1% or less for it to be considered a sport…10% or less to be a redneck sport.
It’s funny you say ‘my good sir’ sounded funnier because that was going to be my defense. But then I thought addadicktome was funnier. Just out trying to find the funny.
TB, I know you read the story about my leg scar but I have many scars and most of them do have some type of interesting story. That doesn’t stop me from making things up though.
When I started shaving my head three scars on the side I got in a car accident really popped out. A kid was looking at them and asked how I got them. They look like claw marks so I told him I was at a zoo when a tiger reached out and swatted me.
His father told me it freaked him out so much he wouldn’t go to the zoo with his class.
Yeah, I had a scar pop out on the back of my head – honestly, I have no idea what it’s from, or if it’s just a weird thing I was born with. I could say it came from ducking under the sword of a ninja assassin, though.
But what a wonderful gift for your dad…and maybe secretly you’ve been wanting it all along! Haha…or maybe not, but it’ll be good “boys time”
I talked to my mom today and we’re actually not going to do it this year – we’re going to try to go somewhere as a big family this summer or something. Maybe next year, though! (I can wait.)
A little sacrifice to make your dad happy, sounds like an even trade when you take into account that you’ll get to spend a whole weekend (?) with your dad and brother.
Yep. We’ll do it sometime, just probably not this year.