Just back from an illuminating weekend up North, where I was led to believe–erroneously–that redneck-dom isn’t the force that it clearly is in my native mid-South. Oh, my friends, but I now disabused.
I have lived in a number of states: LA, KY, MD, IN, NJ (and more), and I have known rednecks. My friends, I am descended, proudly, from a long line of rednecks. I am a painted redneck, wending my way toward bourgeois middle-class respectability. When your daddy dies from too many cigs and Miller Lites, you know that you are the progeny of rednecks. When your daddy’s best friend tells you at said daddy’s funeral, “he could drink a case of beer and you’d never know it,” you know that you are in the presence of a great redneck. I have redneck in my blood and bones. And to top it off, I barely knew my daddy.
And so when I stole away to Lake George, New York, for a weekend break before the semester madness, I was brought up short: Lake George is full of rednecks. And I mean this with both affection and a certain amount of revulsion, for I have both for my own family.
Resort this is not. The good ole boys in the room next to mine drank beer on the deck all day and smoked cigars. They were good enough to offer me both, but I haven’t had a cigar since college and I wasn’t about to ruin my weekend by throwing up.
Here is what I saw in Lake George: two and three-year olds up until 11 and 12 at night, tattooed already or on their way thusly; obese first-graders that would gladly kick your ass if you looked at them slant-wise; big-assed trucks driven by cage-fighters, UFC t-shirts tightly wound around their shot-put bodies; a shop that hawked shirts advertising something called DILLIGAF, which the buck-toothed red-head told me meant, “Do I Look Like I Give A Fuck,” though I had already figured that out since it was plastered everywhere; skinny little teen-aged smokers carrying cases of lime-inflected beers down the street while simultaneously pushing strollers as their babies’ mommas tailed behind, sporting tight blue jean cut-offs and a bad attitude. Non-helmet wearing ATV driving rednecks: YAHOO!
And you just knew that given the right public health program, this would be an orthodontist’s dream town.
This Bud’s for you, redneck town by the lake!
