Redneckedness: Living with, loving & surviving a redneck

by Kit Frazier

  Redneckedness

  Living with, loving & surviving a redneck

  by Kit Frazier

  Redneckedness: Living with, loving & surviving a redneck © 2012 by Kit Frazier. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Midnight Ink except in the case of brief quotations em- bodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Edition

  Cover model(s) used for illustrative purposes only and may not endorse or represent the book’s subject

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Other Books by Kit Frazier

  Scoop (A Cauley MacKinnon Mystery)

  Dead Copy (A Cauley MacKinnon Mystery)

  A MacKinnon Christmas (A Cauley MacKinnon Mystery)

  Part I: Close Encounters of the Redneck Kind

  Foreword: Singing Pigs & Lone Star Underpants: Why Californians Don't Like Texans

  Chapter One: Living with, loving & surviving a redneck

  Chapter Two: You Can Dress Him Up & Take Him Out, But At The End Of The Day, He's Still Just a Redneck

  Chapter Three: Redneck Habitat: Where to find a redneck, if you must

  Chapter Four: The Nekkid Time

  Chapter Five: Inlaws and Outlaws

  Chapter Six: You can dress him up and take him out, but honey, he’s still just a

  redneck

  Chapter Seven: Rednecks should come with Warning Labels

  Part II: The One That Came Along . . . Directly

  Chapter Eight: Welcome to the Wild, Wild West

  Chapter Nine: Small Mercies & other Cowboy Miracles

  Chapter Ten: The Naked Truth: What to do when your dog eats the house

  Chapter Eleven: Sharp Hooks, Smelly dogs and Fish Pee–Just Another Day in

  Paradise

  Chapter Twelve: Mean Cats, Belligerent Toads and Sweet, Warty Revenge

  Chapter Thirteen: Pecked to death by a duck

  Chapter Fourteen: Collapsible shoes, biodegradable underwear and a stark raving

  sex machine

  Chapter Fifteen: No, I don’t want to feel your new ta-ta’s and other workplace

  hazards

  Chapter Sixteen: Sadly, Chicken-Fried Bacon is Not One Of The Four Basic Food

  Groups

  Chapter Seventeen: Never Kiss a Screaming Monkey (and other men to avoid)

  Foreword

  Singing Pigs & Lone Star Underpants: Why Californians Don't Like Texans

  My daddy used to say that you should never try to teach a pig to sing—it wastes your time and annoys the pig. The same can be said about attempting to tame a redneck—it’s possible, but it’s going to take a lot of time and patience, and someone’s likely to get hurt.

  There are many ways to identify a redneck—his pickup costs more than his house (and the pickup usually has better wheels), and more than one person in his family died after hollering, “Hey, y’all, watch this!”

  Two questions I’m often asked are: why would any woman who isn’t of the redneck persuasion marry one of these men, and furthermore, why don’t people from other states like Texans?

  Not long ago, these questions were posed to a slate of Lone Star literati at Pulpwood Queen Kathy Patrick’s Girlfriend Weekend. The panel included stellar authors Sara Bird, David Marion Wilkinson and Carol Dawson, along with Texas Book Festival Honcho Cyndi Hughes, and by some enormous shift of planetary luck, me.

  And while this brain trust of southern bards waxed elegantly on the whys and wherefores as to the bad attitudes toward Texans, the question ended with me, and in my own, simple way, I summed it up in one word: Redneckedness.

  Redneckedness is often related to craziness, and Texans take great pride in lapses of sanity. I hear up north they lock their crazy up in the attic. In Texas, we prop them up on the sofa and invite the neighbors over for iced tea.

  While rednecks in Texas are by and large not locked up (though they are often incarcerated) they do sometimes roam freely about the rest of the country inflicting their redneckedness on unsuspecting strangers.

  It was one such case with my own personal redneck that I used to illustrate the profound affect rednecks have on people outside the state of Texas.

  My redneck and I ventured out of the state without a passport but were easily recognizable, due to certain trademark indicators. Texas rednecks are most often identified by their uniform—Wrangler jeans, boots, and some sort of t-shirt in disrepair, topped with a gimme cap proclaiming a slogan for cars, beer, or Tito’s Titty Bar.

  Of course, there is also an image of the Texas flag somewhere on their person, and often on their underwear.

  I know of no other state where people would wear their flag on thong underwear, or for that matter would want to. But in doing so, Texans can go anywhere in the world with the state flag up their butt.

  On this particular occasion, we put ourselves in the hands of my urbane, Northern California stepbrother, Clif, who was our tour guide the civilized world beyond the bounds of Texas.

  Knowing my redneck’s propensity for alcohol, Clif thought we’d enjoy a tour of some of the California’s better wineries. I am sure my step brother is still ruing the day.

  We wound our way through the verdant, grape-scented wine country to our destination, where, upon disembarking from Clif’s luxury SUV, my redneck marched through the door of the winery, bellied up to the bar and bellowed, “What’s going to get me the drunkest the fastest?” The lull of lovely, sophisticated banter shattered like someone dropped a bottle of five-hundred dollar cabernet. Sighing, I said, “Sadly, he’s not kidding.” With great trepidation (and scanning the room a Punk’d camera), the sommelier excused himself and went to the anteroom to fetch a bottle of something fortified.

  My redneck leaned against the counter, reaching past the cheese salver for a toothpick housed artfully in a shot glass, when one of the innocent bystanders shrieked, “Those are used bamboo skewers!”

  He looked at her like she’d wet the carpet. “Used toothpicks? Then why the hell y’all put ‘em out on the bar?” Saving the day, the sommelier whisked out from behind the swinging doors brandishing a bottle of some wine I am certain none of the genteel patrons had ever seen, and served it along with an empty water glass, presumably to fill my redneck’s mouth and keep him quiet.

  At that moment, a slight, elegant man came bursting through the front door yelling, “There’s a snake in the vineyard! There’s a snake in the vineyard and I think it’s a rattlesnake!”

  Without missing a beat or a slug of wine, my redneck half-turned, still leaning on the bar and said, “Oh yeah? How big is it?”

  The gentle boy raised his hands, indicating about six inches. My redneck snorted. “Well hell, ya can’t even eat that.” I took a deep breath, muttering apologies to my stepbrother, hoping he didn’t work with any of these people when a woman approached, brows raised, nose lifted. “You know,” she said, “as a general rule, we Californians don’t really care for you Texans, but I suppose you don’t care for us either.”

  My mother raised me right, but even I have my limits. My redneck was being true to himself, and this woman was just being downright rude.

  “Well, ma’am, to tell you the truth,” I said, “We don’t have any general rules, and we usually don’t even think about y’all ‘til you start buying up all our property.”
>
  Clif tells me they’re still talking about the time Jethro and Elly Mae went to the winery.

  I finished telling the story at Girlfriend Weekend, and people were ‘bout rollin’ on the floor laughing, and Sara Bird leaned over and said, “Honey, you should right this stuff down.”

  And so I did. Here are the true life stories of being loving a redneck and living to tell the tale. It’s all the truth, but not the whole truth, on account of those pesky statutes of limitations.

  Part One: Close Encounters of the Redneck Kind

  Chapter One

  Living with, loving & surviving a redneck

  Grandma Jessie used to say there are only three kinds of men in this world: the ones you play with, the ones you stay with and the ones who just need killin’.

  With a redneck, you get a three-fer. I know this because I went through all three of these stages with a redneck of my very own.

  And she warned me, the only difference between a redneck and a monkey is better use of opposable thumbs and the ability to buy beer.

  In the beginning (the play-with and stay-with stages), my own personal redneck could do no wrong. The man practically farted hearts and flowers which is a neat trick if you can get him to do it. But as we neared the killin’ stage, I was tempted to chop off some his favorite parts and duct tape them to his forehead.

  Since the law (even in Texas) frowns upon maiming your loved ones, I’ve amended Grandma Jessie’s Rule of Three to include two alternative endings.

  The first is that if you can’t beat ‘em, you’re not using a big enough stick. Face it. You’re just gonna have to out redneck your redneck. This isn’t hard, if you have in fact decided your redneck is worth keeping. The trick is to just hang around with a redneck— any redneck—as long as you can possibly stand it, because sooner or later the redneckedness is gonna rub off on you.

  And honey, once you’ve been subjected to that level of redneckedness, there’s no amount of Extra Strength Clorox or mega-doses of the Discovery Channel that can scrub the redneckedness out from under your skin.

  While greater minds than mine have pondered the meaning and/or classification of redneckedness, I always fall back on Grandma Jessie’s explanation—a redneck is just a cowboy who’s gone over to the dark side.

  You will know you’re on your way to true redneckedness when you realize that kitchen appliances are merely extensions of garage appliances. A steak knife is as handy as a pocket on a shirt and can be used not only for slicing up a good steak, but also as a screwdriver, a back scratcher, or, in a pinch, a hammer. Moreover, you learn the true use of major appliances—transmissions go on the bottom rack of the dishwasher, baseball caps go on the top.

  The second, and my preferred alternative method, is the Redneck Catch & Release Program. You catch and keep your own personal redneck and do the whole moon-pied, doe-eyed, hearts-and-flowers thing until one day he stays out all night and you have to restrain yourself to keep from Super Gluing his frank to his beans. When you've gotten yourself into this kind of situation, what you've done is kissed yourself a screaming monkey. And if you kiss a screaming monkey, it will inevitably, bite you in the face.

  And when you’re finally to the point of wanting to back over your redneck with his own tricked-out pickup truck, it’s time to take him back to the auto parts department at the Wal-Mart where you found him in the first place.

  Actually, breakups can be relatively pain-free if done correctly, and in fact, some can be downright fun.

  Call all your girlfriends, add Tequila and commence to dancing naked in the backyard around a burning pile of his underwear. I warned you—redneckedness rubs off on even the best of us.

  And, after you’ve drunk your bodyweight in Bourbon and Diet Coke and all your good sense ran out the dog door and you decide to go get yourself another redneck, don’t worry. As Mizz Jessie used to say, “There’s an ass for every saddle, and another one’ll be along directly.”

  Chapter Two

  My First Brush with Redneckedness

  My first real brush with a redneck traumatized both me and my mama. I was my minding my own business (isn’t that always how it is when you run into a redneck?), drawing pictures of cats in the fourth grade when Bud Epperson turned away from making glue chips in his desk tray and informed me that he was going to marry me.

  “I’m gonna marry you,” he growled.

  I thought maybe he’d gotten too good a whiff of that glue, but he was dead serious – or as serious as you can get in the fourth grade—and he said, “I’m gonna hold you down and cut your fingernails and you’re gonna milk cows. I’m gonna marry you.”

  Of course I was horrified and ran straight home to ask my mother if he really could make me cut my fingernails and milk cows.

  Horrified her ownself, Mama immediately enrolled my sister and I in Charm School. Apparently, she thought teaching us to eat with the right fork and walk with books on our heads would not only whip us into marriageable shape, but would also make us impervious to the average, every day redneck.

  Sadly, redneckedness rubs off on you a lot faster than charm does.

  Oh, sure, we learned how to artfully apply makeup, how to win beauty pageants and the proper way to cross your legs (at the ankles, with knees pressed together, which incidentally I found out later, is also a perfectly acceptable form of birth control and is still being taught in many a Texas school).

  Mama knew a lot about charm, having pulled herself up by her own petticoats and escaped a life of redneckedness her ownself.

  She also knew through redneck encounters of her own that rednecks can be charming in their own right and they are like Cheese Doodles. Once you’ve had one, you pretty much want the whole bag and then you’d spend the rest of your life with Doodle Dust down the front of your shirt.

  And so it was that we were shielded from blatant redneckedness until well after the

  age when many southern girls lose their virginity in the back bed of a pickup truck, hanging onto a gun rack, which was always my mother’s greatest fear. It turns out there are worse things that could happen.

  My own personal redneck rode into my life the same way he rode out—riding to the rescue of a blonde. The first time, the blonde was me.

  It was my own fault for putting myself in a situation that required rescuing. The particular situation that led me to this particular redneck was, of course, another redneck, because everyone knows the easiest way to get over one redneck is to run right out and jump on a new one (I said the easiest way—not the best way).

  While rednecks can be found roaming freely most anywhere in the continental United States, there are proven habitats that tend to attract them in large numbers, and most of them are in Texas. These places include but are not limited to: anywhere that beer, bait and ammo are sold, any establishment where meat is fried, and anyplace they might get to see some boobies, including company picnics, tractor pulls and family reunions.

  A redneck will never look a gift boobie in the mouth, and will fall all over themselves to get a peek at even one, lone boobie. They don’t even care what they look like. You could have tits you can fold like a pair of socks and a redneck will still want to see ‘em.

  And, as one of my redneck friends informed me, the only bad boobie is a covered-up boobie.

  If you’re looking for a redneck to keep, the Home Depot is by far your best bet. Being at the Home Depot suggests that he is willing and able to fix things, has the money to pay for the things he needs to fix things, and if he pulls out that little orange credit card, you can surmise that he is able to make a commitment at least once per month. You may also surmise that if he’s getting things to fix things at the Home Depot, the home he’s fixing does not come with wheels and a trailer hitch.

  I met my own personal redneck not at the Home Depot, but at the South Austin meat market. Needless to say (or maybe not), both of my boobies were covered.

  On the advice of a friend who knew I needed to move all my personal
possessions out from under the nose of Previous Redneck, I took myself down to the said meat market to enlist the help of Fluf, aka The Meat Market Man.

  I was immediately wary when she referred to him Fluf, but, being acquainted with my fair share of rednecks, I took this with a grain of salt. Besides, I’d left half my shoes at the Ex Redneck’s house. They weren’t my favorite shoes, mind you, but I wanted them back. Another woman could take my place in his bed, but I’d spit nails before she took my place in my shoes.

  And though I was fully clothed on meat market day—as I am on most days—Fluf later told me that there was sufficient evidence that my boobies were worth a little wait.

  With very little malice and absolutely no forethought, I waltzed myself into the meat market full of fear and false bravado, and with good reason. Fluf looked like machete- wielding, swarthy, southern version of Yosemite Sam.

  Not to mention the fact that I was told he could bend a crowbar with his bare hands— not a bad trait when you’re looking for someone to move all of your earthly belongings out of the house of another redneck.

  One thing I knew for sure was that he in no way resembled anything remotely related to fluff, at least until I learned the origin of the moniker.

  FLUF, I discovered much later, was an acronym for Fat Lazy Ugly Fucker, and was bestowed on him by friends at the Baptist Boys’ Ranch. If it is true that all good boys go to heaven, then boys on the fence go to the Boys’

  Ranch, where they are taught survival of the fittest and fastest. Fluf was neither fat nor lazy or ugly, but he could indeed be a fucker when the occasion called for it, especially after copious amounts of tequila—a fact he seemed proud of, because he had a t-shirt that said, Instant Asshole, Just Add Tequila. But as I mentioned, these are all things I learned later.

  While I balked at the nickname, there’s one thing you have to know about rednecks is that they’ve appropriated the Native American custom of naming people for their attributes, abilities or behavior, such “Barn,” as in, her butt’s big as a barn door, “One Arm Amy,” on account of she only had one arm, and “Smidge,” as in premature ejaculation.” So, if you’re planning on saddling yourself a redneck anytime soon, you may as well pick your own nickname, or you’ll be assigned one and it will stick, whether you like it or not.