Coon Dogs, Out Houses and Corn Cob Wine

Redneckology

By Gale Sparks

 I came from long line of rednecks. It was my destiny to turn out the way I am today. Both sides of my family are rednecks. I cut my teeth on fried rabbit, turtle soup, and
 squirrel legs.
            We learned to dip, chew, smoke, and drink by the time we hit our teens.
            My Uncle Bernie gave me my first dip of Skoal when I was
nine, we were floating down the river in a flat bottom boat
cat fishing. He teased me, offering me a dip from his Skoal
can I snatched the can and took a big pinch. 
            Skoal is powerful stuff for a kid. You get a light- headed,
warm feeling, your head starts to spin, and you feel as though
the world is going to throw you off. I knew as I leaned over the side of the boat puking my guts out and seeing the little flash bulb spots popping that this was good stuff and would do it again,
           Over the years, the redneck’s abilities to obtain things that are
high on his priority list become a little more sophisticated. His
quest for alcohol, wild game, hunting, fishing, country music, and
getting laid, may seem insane to one of his urban brothers yet seem
perfectly logical to his buddies.
            One example of my ingenuity was bootlegging beer onto the Cherokee Indian reservation and selling it for a fifty percent profit just to make rodeo money for that weekend.
           As well as the time I sweet talked a cute little cowgirl into crawling inside my sleeping bag, down by the river side, only to be caught in this compromising position by her drunk, three hundred- pound pulp truck- driving daddy. After he shook us out of the bag rolling us onto the gravels like two sweaty rats screwing in a wool sock. As I ran desperately through the woods to get to my truck, I realized that I left my new Stetson hat and Tony Lama boots back with the sleeping bag. I never saaw Sandy again
           You may realize you have graduated with a Bachelors degree in
redneckology, when you are sitting up on a ridge in the Appalachians
listening to your dogs running a coon. While you and old Clyde
Miller’s sit behind his saw mill running off a batch of moonshine from his fifty-gallon still. You have finally reached redneck maturity when you have learned how to make moonshine on your own back porch. using, a ten
gallon pressure cooker, and ten pounds of white cornmeal from your
nearest Save-a-Lot store.
             After all I have done over the years, last and greatest sign of redneckology came when me and possibly the cream of the redneck crop were hunting wild hog in the Okeefenokee Swamp. When we got up at five o'clock, to eat a quick bowl of cereal, and head into the swamp only to find that our milk had clabbered and the only other liquid on hand was a case of Michelob.
             It feels impossible to eat your cereal dry, when your mouth tastes like sawdust from Skoal and beer from the night before. You pour beer on your Cheerio's, without a second thought and eat the hair of the dog that bit you.
            The raising and nurturing of a baby redneck is the same as
rearing any other creature: it can be laid back and easy, or fast and
furious. Each redneck child has his own special quirks, but the end
the results should always be the same: a confident, happy, self- reliant
little redneck that can make the best out of any situation.
            What I'm tryin' to say is just because someone knows how to skin a cat or gut a deer, likes Waylon, Willie, and David Allan Coe doesn't make him an inbred, toothless reject from that Deliverance movie.
            They may just as well be doctors or attorneys or your neighbornext door neighbor The one thing that you can be sure of is when everything in
this Old World has come to an end the redneck will always find a way to survive.