by Annie Smith
Why do you think Minnie Pearl kept the price tag on her hat for years? It’s because she planned on returning it someday. (Hopefully there’s a Refunds and Exchanges desk in heaven.)
Manners
This shouldn’t take a lot of work on your part, because redneck boys and girls just naturally have good manners. It’s in their jeans.
Usually the first word out of a redneck baby’s mouth ain’t “Mama,” it’s “Ma’am.” (Except for Rufus McKinney’s fat little boy, Elmer—his first word was “Spam.”)
You can learn a lot about teaching a kid to be courteous by watching The Andy Griffith Show. You’ll see that little Opie is always polite and well-mannered.
Opie never gets out of line because he wants to make his daddy, Sheriff Andy, proud of him—and because Deputy Barney always carries that dreaded one bullet with Opie’s name on it.
The Andy Griffith Show also is a lesson in how not to raise your kids:
• Don’t let ’em get away with throwing rocks, like Ernest T. Bass—who broke windows all over Mayberry and never once got any serious punishment for it.
• Keep ’em away from hard liquor so they won’t end up the town drunk, like Otis.
• And don’t let ’em change their name and become a sneaky lawyer, like Sheriff Andy did later in life.
Raise your boys and girls with love and they’ll turn out fine.
But if by chance one of your young’uns ever starts to become a little smarty-pants, don’t waste time putting that whippersnapper straight with a hickory switch.
Show your young’uns that Mama and Daddy care enough about them to whup their little butts!
Courtesy
Manners and courtesy go hand in hand. Teach your children to hold doors open for little old ladies, pop the caps off beer bottles for gals, and courteously swerve to just barely nick jaywalkers instead of flattening them like pancakes.
When you take the young’uns for a drive, point out that pickup truck drivers are the most courteous people on the road. Ever notice that when you’re trying to get out from a side street onto a crowded highway, it’s always a pickup man who slows down and waves you out?
A guy in a Mercedes won’t ever do that. He’s too busy talking on his car phone while rushing to his business appointments, and slowing to let you out might cause him to be three seconds late.
If you want to get away from blaring horns, head out into redneck country. Rednecks almost never honk their horn unless it’s to get a cow or a drunk jaywalker off the road—or just for fun, to aggravate some jerk on a car phone.
Your kids also should be raised to believe in fair play, something that’s ingrained in every redneck.
If you don’t believe it, trying bullying some little guy in a redneck bar. You’ll find yourself tackled by six good ol’ boys and you’ll wake up outside in the gutter—with your teeth still inside the bar, talking to your missing ear.
An experience like this can scar you for life. Luckily people in Mayhew County who’ve lost ears in bar fights and fingers in gun accidents can get help by joining a local support group, Parents without Parts.
X Marks the Pot
Ever wonder why rednecks keep an old commode in their front yard? It’s so their kids, playing outside at night, won’t have to keep running inside to pee.
This outside pot’s also a courtesy for neighbors who can stop to relieve themselves while reeling home from the bar late at night.
But most redneck yards are just high weeds. To make the commode easier to find, put a five-foot stick beside it.
You might also want to mark the old couches and cars in your yard so kids won’t trip over them.
While you’re at it, stick a couple of posts on either side of your driveway—which in most redneck neighborhoods is just two tire tracks through the weeds.
Redneck Home Furnishings
Sooner or later your daughters will be living in a home of their own (hopefully, not a home for unwed mothers), and they’ve got to learn how to decorate the inside as well as the yard.
They might choose to furnish their house like yours, but then again they might want the place to look respectable.
Redneck home decor might not always be classy, but it’s definitely in a class of its own. Instead of hiring a decorator, just have your daughter follow our suggestions:
• Bowling trophies should always be placed in your home’s front windows, not in the shower or on top of the commode. Few sights are as awesome as driving down a redneck street and seeing all the bowling trophies gleaming in the sun.
• Hang a pair of genuine longhorn steer horns on the wall near the front door. Visitors can flip their cowboy hats onto the horns as they come inside. Don’t let anybody throw his hat on a table—this will bring you bad luck.
• Above your couch, place a big framed picture of a soaring bald eagle and a framed collection of Indian arrowheads. A black velvet painting of John Wayne would really set off your wall decor.
• Before visitors come over, check the couch to make sure no springs are sticking out. If you find one showing, push it back down and cover the hole with two layers of duck tape.
• The best decoration for your coffee table is a bronze Western sculpture by Frederic Remington—who was the world’s greatest artist except for Norman Rock-well.
Rufus McKinney has a beautiful Remington sculpture with a brass plate that says End of the Trail. It shows a weary Indian on a weary horse, with his spear pointed down to the ground.
We don’t know if the sculpture is authentic or not, because the Indian is wearing a Washington Redskins jacket and the artist’s signature reads Freddie Remmington. But it sure is a conversation piece.
• Keep your ironing board set up in the kitchen. It can be used as an extra table when too many relatives drop over for supper.
• Keep a spare roll of toilet paper under a pink knit cover on the commode tank top. You don’t want people dirtying up your hand towels in the worst way.
• Nail some tin sheets on the roof over your bedroom. Rain beating on a tin roof is the coziest sound in the world and you’ll sleep like a baby.
• Put a bug zapper in every room. Especially the bath-room.
Redneck’s bunkbed
Young’uns Gotta Work
Don’t give your kids allowances. That’s just childhood welfare!
You’ve got to slave long hours for your money—make your young’uns do the same.
Allowances only teach kids they can get somethin’ for nothin’. They’ll grow up expecting a handout from the family or the government and won’t be worth a warm bucket of spit.
If they want a couple bucks for themselves, put ’em to work around the house. Or tell them to walk down the street asking neighbors if they need something done.
Neighbors always can use wild blackberries—which are delicious when covered with sugar and milk. In early summer, put your kids to work picking blackberries to sell around the neighborhood.
Tell them to wait until the berries turn from green to red to black before they start picking. Only Yankee tourists will buy red berries—they’re easily convinced that they’re getting “mountain strawberries.”
The Man with the Goal ’n’ Gun
Kids have to have goals in life, or they’re going to just drift along jobless and wind up eating out of Dumpsters.
Maybe that’s an okay life for a single man or woman, but not when you’re married. It’s downright embarrassing for a friend to catch you, your wife, and kids all chowing down on day-old Grand Slams behind Denny’s.
You might try to tell the friend you’re just having a family picnic and the park was too crowded, but the odds are only about fifty-fifty that he’ll believe you.
That’s why chores are so important to a kid. They teach your young’uns that if they want to have all the good things in life—such as a 30.06 hunting rifle or a silver-plated ladies’ derringer—they’ve got to work for them.
Callus Behavior
/> Look closely at America’s rednecks and you’ll see that most of us are fairly smart and not the least bit afraid of hard work.
Redneck men and women are proud of the calluses on their hands—it’s part of our culture. In fact, the word “redneck” comes from us working out in the hot sun and getting burned on the neck. And calluses are our badges of honor.
Now, in the nonworking crowd it’s a different story.
A 1994 study by Professor Harland K. Sampson of Chicken Neck Junior College showed that among America’s nonworkers, there are only 3.7 hand calluses per 100,000 people—and 89 percent of the calluses come from opening and closing the mailbox looking for government checks.2
But just like any group in America, the redneck nation includes a few shiftless folks. Some are so lazy that if they saw a dollar lying in the street, they’d ask somebody to pick it up for them.
One of our neighbors (we’ll call him Charlie J. to hide his identity, because he might not appreciate this publicity) is too lazy to even remove his cowboy hat when he goes to bed.
One night he was fidgeting around in bed, and when his wife asked what was wrong, he said, “I sho’ wish somebody would take this hat off my head.”
Charlie’s wife flicked it off … and learned to her shock, after six kids and twenty-three years of marriage, that her husband was bald.
The only job Charlie ever held in his life was a six-month stint at a hot dog stand outside the Trailways bus station. And even though he worked by himself, he never once got voted Employee of the Month.
To Charlie’s credit, one month he did come in third in the voting.
Another family over in Potato Ridge (we’ll call them the Johnsons, since that’s their real name) must have inherited a laziness gene. They moved so slow that beside them, a snail looked like it had blazing Olympic speed.
When cable TV came to town, the Johnsons signed up for the home shopping network so they wouldn’t have to bother going to the store. But after watching for two weeks they never saw a single sale on beans or grits, so they canceled their cable.
Don’t tolerate such laziness in your own family. Hard work is a redneck tradition—and your kids have to carry on that proud tradition.
Picking the Right Job
Most young’uns don’t know what they want to be when they grow up. It’s up to you to help steer them into a career.
While Rufus McKinney was raising his six kids during America’s moon shot era, all six wanted to work at Cape Canaveral. But frankly, none of them were rocket scientists. So Rufus got them all jobs working with him at the egg-packing plant.
When your young’uns hit the terrible teens, teach them to avoid these three phrases that could screw up their chances of getting their first job:
“Welcome, Kmart shoplifters.”
“Today’s red light special is on aisle four. And remember, you must be completely satisfied!”
“Would you like flies with that?”
Don’t expect your kids to keep their first job for life. Most people have to try different occupations before they find the one that suits their special talents.
Polly Puckett, who lives four doors from us, was born with six fingers on each hand. That kinda made her famous in town, but she couldn’t seem to turn her celebrity status into a lasting job.
Poor Polly flunked out as a typist, a masseuse, and a chicken plucker before Sheriff Gardner finally found her the perfect job. He made her a deputy on his DUI task force.
Every time Polly pulled over a drunk driver, she’d show her hands and say, “How many fingers am I holdin’ up?” Naturally the stewed guy would guess, “Uhh … ten?”
Polly cleared the roads of so many sloshed drivers that she was named Officer of the Year by MADR (Mamas Against Drunk Rednecks.)
Shorty’s Rise to Riches
Alan Jackson’s song “It’s All Right to Be Little Bitty” expresses our feelings exactly. If your young’uns are satisfied with their lot in life and don’t set their goals too high, they’ll be happier.
You can use Shorty Perkins as a good example of somebody who aimed too high and kept shooting himself in the foot. He wasted half his life trying every money-making scheme he could concoct, but nothing worked.
One time he tried to talk Sheriff Gardner into making 911 a 900 number and splitting the profits. Shorty’s plan was to advertise, “Only $1.29 per minute on your hospital bill.” The sheriff gave him the boot.
Next, Shorty came up with the idea of telemarketing for 7-Eleven. But nobody wanted to buy Slim Jims and Slurpees by mail, even when he offered next-day delivery.
After Widow Brown’s indoor toilet got stolen, Shorty tried to market a homemade antitheft device that beeped and said in a computerized voice, “Please back away from the commode. You are too close. Please back away.”
The widow bought the first one. But the doggone thing went haywire and started talking in the middle of the night—and she shot her commode to death so she could get to sleep.
When the traveling carnival came to town, Shorty opened a booth that featured “dancing chickens.” He had a cage with a hot plate as the floor, and when he turned up the heat the chickens would do the jitterbug like crazy.
Shorty billed his carny dancers as Poultry in Motion.
But one night he got distracted while the heat was on high—and next thing we knew he was billing his star performers as Shorty’s Southern Fried Chicken.
His financial picture got so dim that during one low period his wife Pauline’s false teeth got repossessed. She’s such a bigmouth that the dentist had to send a tow truck—and billed poor Shorty for that, too.
Shorty finally hit it big when he bought one-eighth interest in the gas station. And when the money started coming in, he began living well just to impress people who figured he’d never make it.
He bought himself a tacky toupee that looked like roadkill sitting on top of his head, a double-wide trailer, a big above-ground pool, and one of them fancy foreign-made Rolodex watches.
But Shorty still stuck with his bigmouthed, nagging wife—which is proof to your kids that money can’t buy happiness.
Rednecks’ intellectual pursuit
Dumb and Dumber
Sadly, as with in any group in the USA, the redneck world includes a handful of people who are dumber than dirt. As Aunt Alma would say, “They ain’t got all their marbles lined up in a row.”
When Rufus McKinney’s son Elmer tried to enlist in the army, they asked him what his IQ was and he said, “Twenty-twenty!” For some reason Elmer got turned down, but his sharp “I” did get him a job as a quality inspector down at the egg-packing plant.
Like laziness, dumbness seems to be passed down from one generation to the other in certain families around here.
Some people in our town have looked up their family tree and seen their second cousins still living in it.
And got hit in the eye by a beer can being tossed down.
We know one family so dumb they celebrate Independence Day and the Fourth of July on different days.
Sadly, we’ve got dogs around here with higher IQs than their owners. That ain’t no joke—it was proven by Professor Sampson in a scientific master/pet study at Chicken Neck Junior College in 1990.
One backwoods bloodhound owner scored so low that Professor Sampson told him he’d be better off getting a brain transplant. We heard the man seriously considered having his brain swapped for a monkey’s brain in an operation that would have made headlines across the county.
But the deal fell through because the monkey wanted ten dollars’ difference.
Zero Tolerance for Misbehavin’
Don’t you just want to puke when you see all them whining teenagers on daytime talk shows blaming their parents for all their problems?
On one show this pimply faced drug fiend claimed her problem was her parents’ fault because they made her clean up her room as a kid. Our neighbor Rufus got so mad at that, he took his twelve-gauge off the w
all and blasted the TV!
Now Rufus has to look all over town for a TV to watch the car races, which is an inconvenience he blames on that stupid girl.
Rufus raised three boys and three girls and they all turned out right because, like us, he taught his kids responsibility.
Here’s the most important rule: Don’t let kids get away with nothin’! Early in life, teach them to take the blame for whatever they do.
When your little girl kicks you under the table and won’t stop, thinking it’s funny, kick her back. Don’t be vicious—kick just hard enough to show her how it feels.
If your two-month-old throws up on your shoulder, make her clean it up. If she wets her bed, make her wash and dry the sheets. Don’t accept excuses, such as she ain’t learned to walk yet.
And if your little son burns down your house while playing with matches, go borrow some tools and make him build you a new one—with a Jacuzzi this time around.
It might take him twenty or so years, but you can bet that young’un will never touch a match again the rest of his life.
And when your boys get old enough to drink alcohol, teach them to drink responsibly. That means paying for their own beer instead of sneaking it onto a buddy’s tab.
Passing Out Chores
Plenty of redneck families put out their own vegetable gardens. Assign your boys to do the planting and hoeing, and get your girls to shuck the corn and break the green beans.
Mamas shouldn’t let daughters get away with layin’ in front of the TV while you do all the housecleaning. Switch off the set, boot their lazy butts off the couch, and put ’em to work.
Your home should have a chore list. Give your kids the choice of either volunteering for a daily job or choosing one at random by pulling a slip out of a “chore jar.”