Redneck Review

Saturday, April 30, 2005

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.

Partners in crime (aka The Chipmunk Murderers)
Posted by Hello

Friday, April 29, 2005

When Chipmunks Attack

Chipmunks are cute little creatures. Sometimes they are called
ground squirrels, which are the same thing with different stripes.

Last year #1 son ran into the house hollering, "Mom, Snuggles
is stalking something out by the trees!" I went out to look.
Our long-haired mostly-white calico cat was after a chipmunk.
He was sitting up on his back legs chattering at her.

"Save him, Mom."
"I don't know if I can. When he runs, Snuggles will go after him."
"Just try, Mom."

I walked closer. The chipmunk turned to look at me. He
chattered louder, like he was scolding me, but didn't run. I
reached down and picked him up. He sat very still in my hands.

By then, #2 son and Genius, our short-haired yellow-striped
cat, had joined us. The chipmunk cocked his head to one side,
and looked at me the way the creature looked at Sigourney
Weaver in Aliens. He tilted his head and stared at me with
his beady left eye, like, "What would you do if...................."
HE BIT ME!!!

He jammed his long, curved, left canine tooth (can rodents
have canine teeth?) into my left index finger. Deep into the
fingertip. You know, where all the nerve endings are located.
My first instinct was to fling him as far as I could into the field
aka our 4-acre front yard. But nooooo! I still wanted to
rescue him. My kids would find out soon enough that it's a
cat-eat-chipmunk world out there.

I put the chipmunk on a tree limb about as high as my head.
At that moment, Genius scampered up the tree and whacked
Mr. Chipmunk with a right hook. He tumbled to the ground,
where the waiting Snuggles sank her teeth into him.

Duh! Ground squirrel. Lives on the ground. Oh, and in case
you forgot, too: cats can climb trees. What was I thinking?

The murder didn't traumatize my kids as much as the blood
dripping from my finger. The next day, I asked the school
nurse if chipmunks carried rabies. She called the County
Health Center. They didn't know, but said I needed to come
in for a tetanus shot.

The moral of this story? Don't interfere with Mother Nature
in a game of cat-and-chipmunk.

Who wouldn't try to save this cute little critter?
Posted by Hello

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Watch Your Mouth

As teachers, my friends and I sometimes assume the students
know more that they actually do. Take vocabulary, for instance.
We assume they have been exposed to the same words we have.
This is not the case, since our vocabulary is determined to a
large extent by how much we read, and words we have seen.
Some of our students had never been more than 10 miles from
home. And they didn't exactly have home libraries.

At one time I coached 7th grade girls' basketball. We had
practices with the 8th grade team, coached by my friend, who
for legal purposes will be known as "Betty Jones." Betty would
tease the kids into giving extra effort. She had a great sense of
humor, and the girls responded well. When one did something
dumb, like tried to make a lay-up and bounced the ball off the
bottom of the rim onto her head, Betty would say, "You silly
twit, pay attention to what you're doing!" They took this well,
and got along with her just fine.

One day Betty was called into the office to meet with the
athletic director and the superintendent. Seems one of the
players, who just happened to be a school board member's
daughter, got into an argument with her little brother at the
supper table. He told on her for getting in trouble on the
bus, and she said, "Shut up, you stupid twat!" Her parents
told her not to use that kind of language. She said, "Well
that's what Miss Jones calls us all the time."

Another example: one of our male friends taught 5th grade.
Let's call him "Bob Smith." He tried to break his class in right
from the first day. "Now, I am easy to get along with if you
do what you're supposed to do. You may think I'm nice right
now, but let me warn you, if you don't do your homework, Mr.
Smith will be a holy horror."

One of his boys went home and asked his dad if men could
be whores. "Why do you ask?" "Well, in class today Mr.
Smith told us if we didn't do our work he would become
a whore."

One of the high school teachers used to walk by the detention
students as they were lined up for bathroom break and say,
"Malcontents." A student of mine wanted to fight him. I asked
why. "Because he called us a bunch of 'milk tits.' What does
that mean, that we're babies?"

So.....teachers, watch what you say, or you may have some
explaining to do.

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Redneck Crime

I have only lived in the middle of nowhere for 7 years. Before
that I had a house in town. A $17,900 house. But that's
another story.

We lived on a corner 2 blocks from Main Street in a little
redneck town of about 4500 people. There was quite a
bit of traffic by our house, so I guess people could see what
treasures we had out in the open. The treasures of someone
who owns a $17,900 house, mind you.

We were sleeping soundly in our waterbed one night, (the
preferred bed of rednecks), until we heard someone pounding
on the front door. My husband got up to see who it was,
and found a city police officer.

"Sir, do you have a riding lawnmower?"
"Uh...yes."
"Do you know where it is right now?"
"Parked around back under the kitchen window."
"Will you go see if it's there now?"

Well, of course it wasn't there. Why else would the police
come a-knockin' at 2:30 a.m.?

It seems that some people on the street across the river
had heard something and looked out to find 3 young men
pushing a riding lawnmower up the road. They called the
police, because you know, even though we are rednecks,
we just can't put up with lawnmower-pushing at 2:30 a.m.
We have to have some semblance of civilization, or it will
be anarchy!

The police made the guys pull over the lawnmower, and
asked where they were going to mow a lawn at that hour.
Where did they live? Which one did the lawnmower belong
to? These hardened criminals finally cracked, and admitted
that they took the lawnmower from our house.

Oh, but that's not the strange part. To get this riding lawnmower
across the river (which is named Flat River Creek--don't get
me started, is it a river, or is it a creek?) they didn't just push it.
They carried it over a swinging bridge! That's right, 3 guys
picked up a riding lawnmower and carried it across a swinging
bridge instead of pushing it an extra 4 blocks to the regular
bridge.

So my husband had to take the truck to rescue the lawnmower.
He said, "I don't know why they didn't just drive it. The key
was in it." But hey, it was 2:30 a.m. The guys got locked up.
One was a former student of mine, but he didn't know it was
my house he was stealing from. He couldn't make bail, so he
sat in the county jail awaiting trial.

My husband had to go to court 3 times. The trial kept getting
put off because they ran out of time on law day. He missed
3 days of work. At that time he was an hourly worker with
a lot of overtime. It cost him $150.00 a day in missed wages.
Finally, he dropped the charges. "The kid has sat in jail for
6 months already. I'm not missing more work for this. The
lawnmower wasn't even worth what I've lost in wages."

Did we learn our lesson about storing our valuables in plain
sight? Of course not. A few months later someone took our
push mower. Is there a moral to this story? Not really.
But is seems like lawnmowers are redneck gold.

Tuesday, April 26, 2005


What a bargain... The $300 car.
Posted by Hello

Monday, April 25, 2005

The $300 Car

A couple of my posts have already mentioned our vehicles.
We have quite a collection. As I write this, we have 4 cars
and 2 trucks. For 2 people. Yeah, we have a problem.
Now I didn't say they were all in working order.

One of the trucks has the bed located about 150 feet from
the cab. It is our '67 Chevy collector truck that is being fixed
up for car shows. It has been in the process of being fixed up
for going on 7 years now.

The other non-running car is the topic of this post. The $300
car. Oh, the asking price wasn't $300. We got quite a bargain.

My husband spotted it on the way home from work, a dark
blue 2-door 1996 Toyota Tercel, parked beside a trailer on
a rural blacktop road. It had $400 written on the windshield.
He came home and said, "It has to be a good car. They've
been driving it every day. Now they have a truck, and this
one is for sale." He is always checking out people's yards to
see what items of their junk he can make his treasure.

So I scrounged around and came up with $400 and turned
him loose. As he told me later, the minute he pulled into
their driveway, a teenage kid came out of the trailer and said,
"You can have it for $300. We got a truck and need to get
rid of this car." That should have been his first clue that this
was not really a bargain: 25% off the asking price before he
even made an offer.

Next thing I knew, he was back home to get the gas can.
This should have been his second clue: the car would not
run for the 3-mile drive home--downhill. About 15 minutes
later he came in pulling this bargain behind his truck. Third
clue: it wouldn't run even after he put gas in it.

He took the kid that sold him the Toyota back home, and
came to the house to get #1 son, 9 years old at the time.
He was excited to go see Dad's new car.

A few minutes later,the boy ran to the house, yelling,
"Mom! Dad caught the new car on fire, with ME in it!"

Here came Dad behind him to do damage control. "I told
him to sit in the car and push the gas while I shot ether into
the engine. It blazed up a little bit, but I put it out."

Since when has it been OK to set a car on fire with a
9-year-old in it? Must be a redneck thing.

He coaxed the boy back to the car by promising him a ride if
they got it started. They did, and proudly pulled up in front of
the house. Oh, did you know that the front of the house was
the yard? He said he was going to drive it around the yard,
so if it stopped running they'd be close to home. The boy was
struggling to put on a seatbelt. For a ride around the yard in
a $300 car.

The thing was smoking so bad I could hardly breathe. They
did a couple laps and came back to the front porch. The boy
got out. He had flecks of yellow-gold stuff all over his back.

"What's that all over you?" I had to ask.

"Oh, that's part of the seat. It looks like someone locked a
cat up in this car and it tore up the seats trying to get out."

As I write this, the $300 car is parked by the barn with 2 flat
tires. It has been upgraded to seats from a Porche. You
guessed it. Someone at work was going to throw them away,
so Hubby took them. Oh, and we still have the cat-scratch
seats under the lean-to. You never know when you might
need some junky seats from a 1996 Toyota.

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Hillbilly Garbage Disposal

What do city people do with their garbage? I would imagine
they grind it down the garbage disposal, or scrape it off the
plate into the trash.

What do we do with it here in Redneckland? Throw it
outside, of course.

As I was growing up, we lived in town. OK, not a very
big town, and true, we didn't have sewers there, just ditches
running along the road. But, hey, that was a paved road.
Oh yeah, and I lived in a trailer. But still, it was a civilized
area with neighbors in houses.

Getting back to the garbage issue....After supper (which
is what we call it around here-- not dinner), my mom would
scrape all the garbage into a pan and take it out to the ditch
in the back yard and dump it out. The neighbor's cats would
come a-runnin'. There were 4 of them, John, Ringo, George,
and Paulie. I think the neighbors were Beatles fans.

When I was in Junior High, we built a house outside the
city limits. Mom still dumped the garbage outside, by a
little creek this time. There were no cats, but plenty of
dogs to enjoy this bounty.

So when I moved into my own house in the country, of course
I threw my garbage outside. It is really kind of fun. The kids
sail slices of stale bread off the back deck like Frisbees. They
fight over who gets to throw the eggs or watermelon, things
that explode. This tossing of garbage into the great outdoors
seems normal to me.

When I was teaching at a school several counties away, my
friend had three of us over for dinner. The meal was pretty
good for something she cooked herself. It was after dinner
that the horror began. I was keeping her company in the
kitchen while she cleaned up. She was quite a talker, and in
the middle of a story she said, "Follow me." She picked up
the pan of leftover corn and walked down the hall. Of course
I followed. I don't know which suspense was greater, the
story or the curiosity to find out where she was going with
that corn. She marched into the bathroom, lifted the toilet lid,
and flushed that corn!

Now that's just not right!