Hillbilly Homes

Contrary to what the media tells you, all rednecks do not live
in mobile homes. Some live in old school buses, some live in
camping trailers, and some live in basement homes.

I brought college friends and teacher friends home to see my
little town, and every one of them made a comment such as,
"I can't believe how people live around here." OK, now one
of them was from southern Kansas. She had no right to put
on airs about where she lived. She had mentioned that when
she was growing up, Kerr-McGee was a big employer in her
area. Ha! I've seen the movie Silkwood. You've been
sopping up radiation like cornbread in beans your whole
life, and now you want to get high and mighty with me, Missy?"
Just because you don't like the way people park two school
buses side by side and build a connecting room?

On my way to school every morning, I pass a trailer park.
Half of the trailers (oh, I forgot, they advertise them as mobile
homes) are actually camping trailers. They are very compact,
and would not be much fun to sit in all the time, even with the
satellite dish. Sometimes the people are outside lying on their
car hoods. Trans Ams and Firebirds, mostly. If not renting
space in a trailer park, many people build a basements and put
their trailers on top of them. Then they become immobile homes.
I believe these are advertised as prefabricated homes.

Then there are the basement homes. It goes like this: you buy
a piece of land and dig a basement. By then you are out of
money, so you live in the basement until you can afford to build
a house on top. Sometimes the house never gets built, so you
live in a big concrete rectangle with no windows and tarpaper
on top.

I can't decide who is hillbilliest, me or my husband. I lived in
a trailer until I was 12. He grew up in a regular house, in town,
but with no indoor plumbing. He had an outhouse, got his water
from someone else's house, and took a bath in a Number 7
washtub. I am not familiar with washtub etiquette. He says it
is the long washtub, not the round one. "I had two brothers, so
I would volunteer to take the first bath. That way I got the
clean water." I think he wins.