They'll do it every time!

Have your kids ever embarrassed you? Of course they have.
That's their mission in life.

When my first son was around 2 years old, I had to take him
on a trip to the license office. This is no fun for an adult, so
imagine this little kid having to stand in line at a counter that is
higher than his head, nothing interesting in sight.

I was trying to get a license for a trailer, but didn't have a title
because the owner was deceased. Of course this took quite
a while, and my boy was growing more restless by the minute.
He did a few laps around my legs, pulled on my arm whining
"Let's goooooo!" and kicked at the counter for awhile.

Then he developed an interest in the man at the line next to
us. The guy was wearing jeans and white high-tops, and
a wife-beater white undershirt. Typical attire for the license
office in Redneckland.

Problem Child pulled away from me and sidled over to
this guy and looked up at him. Then he lifted his left leg and
STOMPED on the guy's white high-topped foot. I reached
over and yanked him back into my line, telling the guy,
"Sorry!"

"It's OK." He went back to talking to the worker.

This was when state and federal offices were pushing voter
registration. The guy finished his transaction, and the worker
asked, "Are you registered to vote, sir?"

"I can't register to vote, Ma'am. I'm a convicted felon."

And the moral to this story is.....leave the kids with Grandma
when you go to the license office.

The Lay-Out

I teach at a secondary school in rural Missouri, about 5 miles
from the town where I grew up. So you would think I would
be well-versed in all the local lingo. Think again.

Around this time in April, several years ago, I overheard my
8th graders talking about the "lay-out." Hmm...were they
going to work on their tans? It was mainly the girls that were
carrying on about it. Well, I have to do such-and-such before
the lay-out. Oh, I have to go home and change to get ready
for the lay-out. Hey, you can come home with me until it's
time for the lay-out. No, I can't do that, but I'll see you at
the lay-out. My mom's picking me up, and then we're going
to the lay-out.

I couldn't stand it anymore, so I asked, "What do you guys
mean, lay-out?"

"You know, the lay-out. At the funeral home."

Ahaaa...a former student had died in a car accident, and they
were talking about the visitation. I guess that's what other
people call it. Or maybe the viewing.

Which reminds me of another time, when 3 of my teaching
buddies and I took a trip to South St. Louis. While we were
visiting with our friend's parents, her mother discussed a
recent trip down south to Redneckland for a funeral.

Mama was wound up about the hillbilly customs down in
Washington County. She could not believe the behavior
and attire of the mourners. Here she was, pacing around
in her South St. Louis finest: polyester pantsuit, beehive
helmet hair, and blue eyeshadow. She gestured dramatically,
waving around handfuls of rings, while we sat raptly on the
couch, a captive audience. Then she stopped, leaned over,
and whispered "...and the corpse's husband was wearing
a windbreaker and tennis shoes!"

At least she didn't say she had attended the lay-out.

Playin' Possum

OK, city people, do you know what a possum looks like?
You're not missing much. It is like a giant rat, but with
bug-eyes, and uglier. The actual name for it is "opossum,"
but nobody ever calls it that. We have a lot of them down
here in Redneckland. Their natural habitat is dead along the
side of the road, but every now and then you can spot a live
one. We had one that used to come up onto the porch at
night to eat dogfood.

Here's a little possum humor for you.
"Why did the chicken cross the road?"
"To show the possum that it could be done."

One morning as we were leaving for school, we saw one
by the garage. It was stretched out on its side like a dog lying
in the sun. Funny thing, though, was the layer of frost on
its fur. It looked like it was sleeping. An hour earlier my
husband's truck had been parked right where it was lying.
You know, the 4WD Ford F250 Extended Cab Long Bed
that is too big to fit in the garage. The possum didn't look
flat, and it didn't look dead. But it sure wasn't moving.

I told #1 son to go poke it with his toe to see if it would
move, but he politely declined. Actually, I think his exact
words were: "No way! You go do it!" Well, since I didn't
want to be late, I said I would check it when we got home.

Both boys craned their necks to see it as we went up the
driveway. And they did the same thing on the way back
in the afternoon. The day had warmed up, and Mr. O. Possum
was in the same position as we left him. #2 son said, "Maybe
he's just tired and taking a nap." Nine hours is one long nap.
I said, "Hey, maybe he's just "playing possum!" Heh, heh,
I crack myself up sometimes. The kids didn't find this nearly
as humorous as I did. In fact, they didn't crack a smile.

I got out and poked it with my toe, and of course it didn't
move. The dog must have scared him to death. There were
no marks on him at all.

When my husband got home, I told him he needed to get
rid of it. He came back about 5 minutes later, and said
"He's gone." I should have let well enough alone, but no, I
had to ask where it was. "Did you sling him over the fence
into the neighbor's field?" That's what I would have done.
Make a note never to move into my neighborhood.

"No. I put him in the sinkhole." OK, people, we have well
water. Do you know what a sinkhole is? It is like a giant
bathtub drain down into the water table. That the well taps
into. That gives us our water. That we drink.

Make another note: If you do move into my neighborhood,
don't drink the water. And repeat after me: "A sinkhole is not
nature's dumpster."

The Swimming Pool Truck

We had a minor crisis a couple years ago when the kids and I
couldn't get the car out of the garage to go to school. It's kind
of a long story, but hey, welcome to my life.

It all started with the fish pond. Not a real fish pond. This was
a redneck fish pond. We bought it at Sam's Club, the Wal-mart
for city people. It was gray plastic molded to look like rocks,
with a little pump to make a waterfall. The whole thing was
about 4 feet long and 3 feet wide. The plan was to put goldfish
in it, and let them grow like those big Japanese goldfish that you
see in real fish ponds. We started with two goldfish that my then
7-year-old son won at the school carnival.

The fish pond was installed beside our back deck, and my
husband fed the fish morning and evening. He bought more
goldfish at Wal-mart and dumped them in. Things were going
fine until we started having problems with the pump. I think
it might have had something to do with the green slime that
now covered the surface of the fish pond, but my husband
said no, it was a malfunction with the pump. He was going
to take it out and look at it when he had time.

So the kids and I rushed out to the garage as we did every
morning, and the garage door wouldn't go up. I thought
maybe there had been a power problem and the breaker
was tripped, so I looked in the fuse box and saw that we
didn't have breakers in the garage, but old-fashioned screw-
in fuses. And this one was missing. To protect his precious
fish pond pump, my husband had stowed that fuse who-
knows-where, and had already left for work. This was
before we had a cell phone. No way to find out where
it was. I couldn't lift the door with that manual chain thing
because the SUV was so big it was parked under that
chain and I couldn't reach it.

We did some brainstorming on how to get to work on time.
My oldest son thought we should call Grandma to come
give us a ride. No good. That was a 30-minute drive
to get us and a 30-minute ride back to town.

Then I thought of the old truck. I ran in to get the key,
and herded the boys toward the barn. About halfway
there, parked in some trees, was the old truck. A 1988
metallic blue Chevy Silverado club cab long bed with
several rust holes and, are you ready for this, an old
abandoned swimming pool filling up the bed and most
of the cab. One redneck's trash is another redneck's
treasure. Someone at work was throwing away this old
pool, and my husband said he wanted it. It was not a
modern pool, but an old one with a vinyl liner and a metal
frame and a bunch of hoses and a pump or filter or some
such heavy metal part.

I put the littlest boy in the back seat under some plastic stuff.
No room for his child safety seat, but he had a seat belt.
He couldn't see a thing except what was under the plastic.
That was fine with him--he found an old striped canvas train
conductor's hat from a trip to Silver Dollar City, and put it
on and babbled about Thomas the Tank Engine.

The other kid had to ride beside me. And by that I mean
like a conjoined twin connected to my hip. He had filter
hoses winding around his head, but seemed game for the
adventure. This was quite a trip. At any moment, I knew
those big flapping wrap-around pieces in the bed were
going to blow out. I could hardly turn the wheel for all
the hoses. And that big metal thing kept rolling from one
side of the floor to the other.

We pulled up in front of the daycare, and the lady peeped
out the door in horror. Once I dragged the little one out,
she opened up and let us in. By now we were about 20
minutes behind.

I took off for the elementary, where I had to get out to
let the other kid disentangle from the hose maze. He
thought it was an exciting trip. I just thought it was an
embarrassment. Not that I'm so high and mighty that
I can't drive an old truck to school. It's just that I would
rather not have taken my hand-me-down pool with me.

Inside of the Redneck Kids' Clubhouse
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Clubhouse from above.
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Entrance to the Redneck Kid's Clubhouse
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Redneck Kids' Clubhouse

My son went to a birthday party a couple weeks ago, and the
kids started putting sticks and leaves on top of some big rocks
to make a clubhouse. When he came home, he asked his dad
to bring him some big rocks up from the creek to make a club-
house. Of course that would be too much work, so his dad
told him he knew just the place. I didn't think any more about
it, and both boys and their dad went out to play.

They came back in about an hour later, all excited. "Dad
found us this great place for our clubhouse! Come look!"
So I went outside, about 50 yards from our front porch,
and saw the "clubhouse." It was one of our sinkholes.

Oh, we have two sinkholes, a large one and a small one.
This was the small one, but still a sinkhole. Now I'm not
sure if you know what a sinkhole is, but in this area it is
where the underground water has eroded away the rock
and left an opening between the surface of the earth and
the underground water table. In other words, it is like a
cave with the top eroded away. Sometimes there is water
in the bottom, sometimes not. In our big sinkhole, you can
drop a rock and eventually hear it splash. It is about 50
yards past the small sinkhole.

I, of course, had a few words to say about this new clubhouse.
Number one being that it isn't safe to play in a sinkhole. My
husband said I was overreacting: "It has a dirt floor." Yeah,
for now. How do we know it is finished collapsing? Maybe
that is just the roof that fell in and got stuck, and it's going to
collapse again.

The kids were happy as could be. They have a cool clubhouse.
They had covered the top with sticks. So it kind of looks like
some primitive trap that unsuspecting animals fall into and land on
pointy sticks. I do not like this idea of using a sinkhole for a
clubhouse.

"What am I going to do when one of them falls through to the
water and gets washed along in that underground river? I can't
save him, and by the time I call for help he'll be miles away."

My husband still thinks I'm overreacting. My mother says to
dress them in life jackets and tie a rope on them before they
go out to play. Now that's a good idea.

Redneck Revenge

If you live on a rural route, you know what a pain it can be
when people dump out junk they can't be bothered to dispose
of properly.

We have had an entire burned truck abandoned at the entrance
to our property, a dump-truck load of tree trimmings right across
the road so you couldn't drive in, an old refrigerator, and countless
puppies and kittens. More about the live stuff another time.

One Sunday morning I was headed to town to do the grocery
shopping, and saw a Wal-mart bag full of something on the gravel
road to our property association. We have 10 families that have
mailboxes on this end of the property. We try to keep it cleaned
up and looking nice. So I stopped the car and got out to pick up
the trash. Now it was already 80 degrees, and this bag had half a
20 oz. Mtn. Dew that was still cold. So somebody was in such
a hurry that they couldn't haul their trash home, they had to dump
it on our road. I looked through it, and found a cardboard-and-
plastic wrapper from a kid's toy package, an empty pack of
cigarettes, some losing scratch-off lottery tickets, an empty chip
bag, a little-chocolate-donut wrapper, AND a junk mail ad for
some kind of off-brand cigarettes WITH A NAME AND
ADDRESS.

I threw the junk in the car, and after shopping, I smuggled it
into the house and down to my office. I didn't tell anybody about
this until now, because it really is kind of psycho.

I found an old Amazon.com box and printed a new address
label, along with a short note that we DO have a sign down by
the road that says we prosecute trespassers, so do not dump
anything else on our private property. Then I took the soda
and poured it out so I didn't have to pay to ship old soda,
and I packed all the junk in the box with the note on top and
sealed it up. I propped it under my desk until the next day when
I could get to the post office. Yes, I really did mail it. It was
two-dollars-and-change well spent.

Yes, it felt very wrong, but oh, so right. Because this address
was a couple towns away on a rural route. That meant the
mailman wouldn't just leave it on a porch--with a mailbox
out on the road, he would leave an orange card to pick
up the package at the post office. So this lucky litterer would
have to go to town and pick it up. Hmmm....did he work,
and have to make arrangements for someone else to get it? Did
he wait until he was out running errands with the family? Did he
send a wife/girlfriend to get it? If only I could have seen the face
of the person who opened up his own trash. What karma!

About This Blog

What's this blog all about? It's about the midwestern experience.
What makes us hillbillies tick? You won't know till you've been
here in central Missouri. People and attitudes are different.

Years ago, when I first heard comedian Jeff Foxworthy talk
about "You might be a redneck if...." , I thought "Yeah, so..?"
The things he talked about were definitely part of my lifestyle.
For example, "If you put your working TV on top of your non-
working TV, you just might be a redneck." Been there, done
that. Well, my dad did, anyway. For about 6 months. And what
about using margarine tubs for Tupperware? I still do.

When my 10-year-old son can help me, I would like to post a
picture on this site of what is in my front yard. It kind of defines
my hillbilly lifestyle. OK, so the suspense doesn't kill you--it's a
5th-wheel camper. Now, I don't know why we can't park it by
the barn, or in the field on the other side of the house. I guess my
husband wants to admire it out the front window of the living
room. He has some funny ideas, which I will be glad to share
with you in coming weeks.

Here is Hubby's latest dream: he wants a 1986 Mercedes to
drive to work. With the price of gas soaring, he has decided that
the Ford F250 4WD Extended Cab Long Bed with the off-road
package that he just had to have 2 years ago is not exactly
economical for his daily 60-mile-round-trip commute. We found
this buttercup yellow Mercedes 300SE on a used-car lot, and he
started talking about how 2 or 3 guys at work have a Mercedes
deisel and how they are saving money. Now for the odd hillbilly
twist--they use an alternative fuel. (No, it's not moonshine.) The
secret is cooking oil. The guys go around to Chinese restaurants
and ask for their used peanut oil. Hubby says french fry oil will
work too, but you have to strain it. I said I will consider letting
him buy the car, but if I catch him sitting around outside Chinese
restaurants, it's gone!

You know the 5th wheel camper I told you about?
This is it right in front of our house.
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