Can You Say "John Deere?"


This is the John Deere corner. That's the door on the left
that leads downstairs. I'm glad we got a picture of the fan
that has never been cleaned. It has been in our old house
near the chat dump (lead dust, anyone?), to my Steelville
classroom, my current classroom, and here.

There's my grandma's wicker picnic basket, and some old
student desks that Hillbilly Grandma got from her old school.
The wooden high chair is from an auction. I don't know why
we needed that, since our boys had a plastic one, and were
grown out of it by the time this chair joined the family. On the
end of the shelf is a bottle of some kind of alcohol that my
other grandma gave Hillbilly Husband. Yeah....let's make sure
to store the really flammable stuff in the loft of a tin barn that
might reach...oh, I don't know....maybe 150 DEGREES in the
summer.

Tomorrow...the last corner of the BARn Loft.

#1 What Would Rednecks Do?

Instead of my usual Saturday Hillbilly Mom's Movie Challenge, I am
starting "What Would Rednecks Do?" There is an answer that I have
in mind, but there is certainly more than one correct answer. This
week's question:

You find a possum sleeping in your driveway as you are leaving for
work. It is still there in the afternoon when you return. You just can't
have a possum in your driveway indefinitely. The neighbors might think
less of you. What Would Rednecks Do?

BARn Loft In Progress


This corner is across from the bar. It is a work in progress.
The most notable objects are the early 1900's double-barrel
shotgun and the old fishing pole mounted on the wall.

That is some sort of Coca-Cola diner thing mounted on the
wall. More Johnny West memorabilia jeep and trailer. On
the shelf are a beer pitcher and goblets, brand unknown to
me. The set of glasses is probably Falstaff. The TV and VCR
were scavenged from the kids. The movie library is mostly
kid stuff for when #2 son comes to the bar. It also includes
my Waterboy, and a John Wayne collection, and I think
my Lonesome Dove set.

This corner definitely needs a makeover.

BARn Loft, Redneck Style


Here is what Hillbilly Husband built in the loft of our barn...
his own personal bar. He collected those beer bottles at
flea markets. His oldest son brought him the girly poster.
The brown bar chairs he brought from his old workplace.
Hanging above the bar are beer buckets. I assume these
came from flea markets also, except for the 3 I had from
the St. Louis Strassenfest.(Hey, I had a life before I met
him.) Some of the trays he got on eBay.

As you might guess, he did not consult me about the floor.
And that attractive black runner with the yellow safety stripe
was purchased through his work. It leads to a little room
where he is going to put a stove and microwave. He already
has them, scavenged from our old kitchen and Hillbilly
Grandma's kitchen. There is a drafting table bought from
his old job, and a Johnny West horse trailer from my childhood.
They are not really part of the bar motif, they just happened
to be in the picture that #1 son took for me. (He thinks of it
as a spy mission.)

The bar top has a Falstaff logo that HH traced and colored
(everything he needs to know he learned in kindergarten) and
clear-coated. There is a Wal-mart mini-fridge behind the bar.
To hear him tell it, he stocks it with soda for the kids. To hear
my little spy, 001, tell it, it is stocked with soda, beer, and
candy bars.

Tomorrow...another view of the loft.

Inside the Redneck Barn, 1st Floor


This is looking to the right, once you go in the door.
Hillbilly Husband built a workbench with cabinets that
runs along this wall and the back wall. That is the best
part. Not that you can see it.

This barn is like Forrest Gump with saws...you got your
table saw, mitre saw, band saw, circular saw, jigsaw...
I don't know my saws, so I don't know the ones in the
picture. On the wall near the ceiling are loops of saw
blades in their brown paper wrappers.

There's a dust collector (ha! everything in here is a dust
collector), and a pull-down electrical cord in the foreground.
Hanging to the side is a dolly (or to be macho about it, a
hand truck).

We used to be able to park a truck or the lawnmowers
(working and nonworking) and the 4-wheelers in here.
HH has some cleaning to do, as soon as he gets done
with his upstairs play room. Pics of that tomorrow.

Ground floor, looking in the door of the Redneck Barn,
you will find a lot of junk. This is like one of those pictures
where you have to find hidden items. I see the seats from
a Porche that Hillbilly Husband got at work. There is #2
son's itty bitty 4-wheeler, some trash cans with actual trash
in them (as opposed to dogfood and aluminum cans).

I think the red thing is a gas can, but it could be a case for
some kind of manly tools. The green cylinder, according
to #1 son, is some kind of gas for welding. The paneling/
plywood things are a platform taken apart and brought
home from work by HH. He only works for the free stuff,
I think. I see some car jacks, and the metal sawhorses,
and some lawn chairs. The floor is concrete with red dye,
not some gruesome remnants from chopping someone up
and stuffing her in a 55 gallon barrel (listen to your mama,
Redneck Diva!).

The empty space is only there because the doors open in.
If you can name anything in either picture, have at it.

Big Blogger Final Challenge

The Big Blogger Final Challenge will net the winner 1000 votes.
I need them, but I am not optimistic. Even though I pride myself
on being a pretty darn good cyberstalker, I could not find this info
on Big Blogger. I will do my best.

1. What musical instrument does Big Blogger play when it
is time to get out of the shower? Since my voyeuristic powers
do not reach across the ocean, I will have to guess on this one.
I know it is not the flute, because Big Blogger has seen American
Pie. Now the most logical would be "air guitar," but I am going to
be different from the herd and say "air drums."

2. What Simpson quote does Big Blogger say when she
gets home from a hard day at work? This was a tough choice.
I prefer "Television! Teacher, mother, secret lover." But I think
Big Blogger would go for "I'm done working. Working is for
chumps."


3. What is Big Blogger's favorite animal? This would be the
yabby. I don't know what a yabby is, but that's the answer, unless
BB plagiarized her animal preferences from Neisha.

4. What food stuff does Big Blogger keep in emergency
supply? This is a tough one. It is not mushrooms, or cheese for
a sandwich, or a Boston Bun. It could be kangaroo, the other
red meat. It could be chicken, for making 4-Finger Chicken.
It could be lamb fries, because Big Blogger needs them to deal
with the lecherous old men who follow her pheromone trail. At
first I thought it was Melba Toast, but for now I will play it safe
and say it is safety-spice lemon pepper.

5. What should Big Blogger do when this competition is over?
Hmm...Stand-up comedy...make a movie...get a cooking show
...advice column? I like the advice column idea. It will give Big
Blogger the best opportunity to force people to do her bidding
like she did in the Big Blogger Contest.

ON SECOND THOUGHT....
Let me try those again:
1. Air guitar
2. "Kill my boss? Do I dare live out the American dream?"
3. Dog
4. Vegemite
5. Advice column

ON THIRD THOUGHT!
Some minor adjustments:
1. Air BASS Guitar
2. "D'oh!"
3. Cow
4. Vegemite
5. Advice Column

Answers to Movie Challenge 7.0

And the winner is......Alexandrialeigh, with a 200 % increase in her
score from last week. Congratulations, girl. Take a cyberbow.
The answers:

1. "He looks somewhat like a mouse."
Jonathan Lipnicki in Stuart Little, looking at his new "brother."

2. "Eddie says after the baby comes, I can quit one of my night jobs."
Miriam Flynn to Beverly D'Angelo in Vacation.

3. "It's my special award! Fra...gi...le."
Darren McGavin, uncrating his leg lamp in A Christmas Story.

4. "Seven years of college down the drain."
John Belushi in Animal House.

5. "I can understand if you don't want to do this anymore."
"What?"
"The babysitting."
"There's no baby to sit."
Bruce Greenwood and Sarah Polley in Exotica, when she is
reluctant to babysit his dead daughter anymore.

6. "Kevin, you are what the French call 'le incompetant'."
His movie sister(?) to Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone.

7. "It's always cold. It's from a glacier."
Adam Sandler to Fairuza Balk in The Waterboy.

8. "What's a handon?"
"You know what a handon is. I taught you last night."
Lea Thompson and Tom Cruise in All the Right Moves.

9. "How you get all that action, without any equipment, is
beeeyooond me."
Alex McArthur to Patricia Charbonneau in Desert Hearts,
wondering how she can pick up more women than he can.

10. "You two are gonna dry up in some filthy lesbo lockdown--
with BAD lighting. I don't have to kill you to kill you."
Ray Liotta to Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt in
Heartbreakers, after finding out they scammed him out of
his car-stealing fortune with a fake marriage and divorce.

We Are Rednecks. Any Questions?


This is our redneck barn. It was kind of pretty until Hillbilly
Husband decided to decorate it.

On the left, there is a plastic trash can, because you wouldn't just
want to throw trash down on the ground and de-beautify the area.

Beside the trash can is a riding lawn mower. Oh, it's not the one we
use to mow the yard. It's one of the two nonworking lawnmowers.
According to #1 son, this is the one that won't steer. I don't know
why we keep it. Maybe HH will hitch it behind the 4-wheeler and
mow the lawn that way. We had 3 nonworking lawnmowers, but
somebody stole one. Oh, the bad luck! Get away with stealing a
lawnmower, and then it won't work. Crime doesn't pay, kids. And
no, it wasn't the swinging bridge lawnmower that we lost in town.

Next we have the lovely handmade wooden doors, because we are
too cheap to get metal doors. They didn't look too bad until HH put
those license plates up. They are not even our license plates--he buys
them at flea markets. As long as he isn't stealing them off cars, I guess
it's OK. The inside of the door is badly scratched, because HH
forgot the dog in there overnight, and he tried to dig out.

We have the big "C" that HH got at work. "They were going to throw
it away!" And the homemade basketball goal. Yes, HH is a wizard
with wood. It used to be a plastic milk crate with no bottom, but
then he upgraded.

The most rednecky thing here is the bed of the Dean Truck. That's
the truck HH is "fixing up" as you can see. My stepgrandpa left it
to him, oh....about 7 years ago. In the bed is the hood, and some
other junk #1 son couldn't name. He is my authority (snitch) on all
things barn.

Under the right-hand lean-to is an air conditioning unit. Does it work?
What do you think? It has been there about 5 years, because one of
these days HH is going to hook it up so the barn will be cool for him
to "work" in. Yeah, it's not an animal barn. It's HH"s junk barn.

Last, we come to the grassless area in the foreground, which is the
"burning pile." Cause that's what rednecks do with their trash. Just
the paper and cardboard, though once he burned a box spring and
I don't know where it came from. Maybe he is hiding a life of crime.
And he used to burn the plastic coating off copper wire and then
sell the copper to the junk man known as "good buddy." He had
to give his name and address every time, because people get kind
of suspicious when you are trafficking in melted copper. I know
this was legit. They were tearing out the old wiring at his plant, and
gave it to him (woohoo!) to keep from paying to haul it off.

Next time: the inside of the redneck barn.

Big Blogger Update

Well, it looks like Big Blogger is up to her old tricks again. Since
I was being beaten so badly by the Cheese Sandwich, Big Blogger
gave me those votes, and gave mine to a sheep on a unicycle.
Mr. Huggies is still far ahead of me and Sheepy. (But I had way
more votes than I expected, anyway. Thanks, people!)

The "Tokashima Inn."

What Kids Do When They're Bored

This is one of the more constructive things my son did when he
was bored. No, at our house we don't play cards or dominoes...
we use them as construction materials.

This is the 11-story Tokashima Inn. He named it, so if that's a
bad word in Japanese, it's his fault, not mine. Don't think for a
minute that I asked him to take a picture for my blog. He took
a picture after the completion of each level. He had 28 pictures,
due to faulty construction and collapse at the beginning of this
project.

A couple days before this high-rise hotel project, he gathered
up three old Amazon boxes and two 12-pack soda boxes, taped
them together, and said it was a cathouse. I did not explain the
true meaning of cathouse.( I hope he doesn't go to school and
tell his new teacher that he has a cathouse.) I told him those cats
would never go in that thing. Well, they do. The soda boxes are
like tunnels to the main rooms. And the cats lie around in it.
They are very stupid, I think.

He has done everything he can to his computer, so last night he
re-installed Windows 98 on his little brother's computer--just
for fun. He said that would make it run faster by getting rid of junk.
(He put that in a form that I could understand.)

He wanted to play online poker, but I discouraged that. So for
a while he was pacified with Hoyle Casino Texas Hold 'Em.
Did I mention that he's 10 going on 40?

Big Blogger Update

When I checked earlier today, Cheese Sandwich was winning.
Now Mr.Huggies has taken the lead, with Cheese Sandwich
in second. I am a very distant third, as of 9:05 p.m. Central
Daylight Time.

Weekend Update

News from the scavenging file: Hillbilly Husband and #1 son went
to Lowes for some plywood Saturday morning. On the way, they
saw some insulation in a giant dumpster by a local high school that
has been putting on a new roof. HH said, "We'll stop and get some
of that on the way home." He has been adding a room at the barn.
#1 son reported that when they came back, it was already gone.
The good junk doesn't last long in Redneckland.

News from the getting-out-of-cooking file: We went to The
Catfish Kettle for supper Saturday night. #2 son is finicky and
won't eat catfish, shrimp, chicken, slaw, beans, or hushpuppies
from this place. That left him with fries. I think he ate about two
potatoes worth. We were waiting for HH to finish eating when
a young waitress attempted to seat a family at the table behind
us. She carried a wooden high chair, and lifted it up and swung
it toward the end of their table, solidly thumping #1 son on the
right shoulder. He said, "Ow." He was trying to be quiet about
it, which is sooooo uncharacteristic of him. If that happened at
home, he would be writhing on the floor screaming that we had
dislocated his shoulder. Poor little guy. The waitress said, "Oh,
I'm sorry. I feel so bad." I figure she could have given him his
$3.95 meal for free, but no such offer. If I ran a business, that's
what I'd do. Put a money value on my kid's pain, gosh darn it!

Big Blogger Challenge #15

No rest for the wicked (or is that weary)? Rebecca has given us
another Big Blogger assignment: The Worst Pick-Up Line Ever
Used on You (or By You), and The Best Bar-Room Joke.

The Worst Pick-Up Line...
I can not decide which is worse, so I will include them both.

"So...do you pull the train?" Uh...I believe this is a reference
to a group sex kind of thing. This was from a frat boy in college.
Charming, aren't they?

"Feel how hairy my legs are. Come home with me and I'll tell
you about my pigs." Yeah...that's pretty bad--but it gets worse.
This was from a girl pig-farmer from Kansas, also in college.

Yeah, I think the second one was the worst. Maybe I should
have picked a better college.

Best Bar-Room Joke
A guy goes into a bar carrying an octopus. He sets it on the bar,
and tells everyone it can play any kind of musical instrument they
can give it. He says he'll pay $100 to anyone who has an instrument
the octopus can't play. Some guys run out to find musical instruments.
The first one comes back with a harmonica. The octopus picks it up
and plays it, no problem. The next guy has a harp. The octopus
strokes it with all eight legs, playing beautiful music. The third guy
brings in bagpipes and sets them on the bar by the octopus. The
octopus picks it up and turns it over, fiddling with the pipes. "Ha!"
says the guy. "Pay up. He can't play it!" "Play it?" says the octopus.
"I'm going to **** it once I get its pajamas off!"

Going Anywhere? Visit Australia, and VOTE for Big Blogger

If you have time today, pop on over to Australia to visit Rebecca.
You can decide the winner of her Big Blogger Contest by voting
for me or my competition, Mr. Huggies. Check him out, make your
decision, and cast your vote in Rebecca's sidebar. Oh, or you also
have the choice of voting for a cheese sandwich. You can vote as
often as you like. And you can read the Adventures of Bob and
Carl the cartoon snowmen while you're there.

I just went there to give myself a vote, and the cheese sandwich
was winning, with 7 votes. Huggies had 4, and I had 1, (my own)!
Use your own judgement. That cheese sandwich is kinda cute.

Big Blogger Challenge #14 Patriotic Speech

I hate giving speeches. But there are only 2 of
us left in Rebecca's Big Blogger contest, so I
must speak to you on patriotism today. Please
bear with me. I am imagining all of you in your
underwear. I will make this speech because I
am an American, not an American't. Oh, and
I am supposed to include cliches and icons, so
don't think I'm making fun of our great country.
It's part of my assignment.

We are the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe
free, the wretched refuse of the teeming shores. Yep! We're some
Yankee Doodle Dandies! And this great American woman is our
symbol of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What? She's
actually French? OK, let's move on.

I'm not so good with history, but my Uncle Sam told me a little
story. Seems it all started when we wanted to change the rules
of the official church. And what better way than to sail across
the ocean? Yeah, some of us wanted to get rich quick, too.


Seems as if we were still hung up on that rules
thing, because a bunch of us didn't want to pay
taxes. Of course that was a good excuse for a
tea party. The British were not invited, and
started a big fight. We revolted. Paul Revere
went for a ride, and Sir Francis Scott Key
wrote a song in the dark, "The Star Spangled

Banner," which was a lesson never to write a song in the dark,
because it is the hardest song to sing in the history of our country.
Some people preferred "My Country 'Tis of Thee", but since we
sampled the tune from "God Save the Queen," it was not a good
idea because the British might be touchy about us stealing it, and
they had just lost the war and all.

The father of our country, George Washington, could not tell a lie--
though he did vandalize a cherry tree. He needed the wood for later,
to build himself some false teeth. He also had a penchant for standing
up in boats, which was dumb because if he fell in the Delaware, he
would have lost his wig, and it was pretty freezing cold that day.

We got rich with tobacco, which is not really good for you unless
you are the one growing it. Abraham Lincoln put a crimp in the
tobacco and cotton industry when he abolished slavery, which
was the civil thing to do. We even had a big war over it called the
Civil War. That spawned one of our classic novels, Gone With
the Wind, and also a movie where Clark Gable said a bad word.

Four score and seven years ago....was 87 years ago. I don't
know much about this historical period. I think WWI had just
ended. Some presidents' heads were put on a mountain in the
middle of nowhere so not many people could see them. Not
their actual heads, that is just wrong. It was heads carved in
stone. I think a lot of people got depressed around that time
because they lost money in a stock market crash. Then they
built Hoovervilles which were cardboard box cities and ate
a lot of soup. For jobs they went out and built roads that we
still have today that are too curvy and hard to drive, but they
thought they were doing a good job at the time.

That brings us to around WWII time, which shall live in infamy
because the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, which outraged
us to have an an attack on our soil. We went through some
other wars with Korea and Vietnam, and that brought us to
the civil rights era, which was a long time coming because all
races and women should have the same rights as the white male
citizen. Some crazies didn't think so and assassinated JFK
and MLK. Now we all have rights and by golly we will tell
you that we do and we will sue you if you don't like it.

We are lucky to be able to pretty much say and do what we want,
worship as we please, and travel at will, unless we are convicted
felons.We are fortunate indeed to be reaping the benefits of those
who came before us and were not afraid to stand up for their
beliefs. As the bumper sticker says: America-Love It or Leave It.