Any vestiges of my Yuppie upbringing have officially disappeared. I've been asked to turn in my Nordstrom's card, avert my eyes when a beemer drives by, and stay up-county where I belong. We are, in a word, redneck-a-fied.
Ignore the fact that Martin considers clean cargo pants evening attire.
Or that I took the kid to a party without any shoes.
Or that I've got a baseball cap permanently attached to my head.
That a weekend jaunt to the dump and Tractor Supply constitutes a road trip.
That entertainment is watching the kids play naked in a pothole after a rainstorm.
That I wear spurs when I shop for groceries.
Or that we're a two pickup family.
That people identify our house simply as "the one with the sheep."
Shove aside all those facts. The brief exchange I had with my barefoot 3-year-old sums it up.
We were at a friend's house when Cayden waved his hand down around his knees. With wonder he asked:
"Mom, what is this air blowing out of the wall?"
me: "That would be air conditioning."
Okay, so our house isn't jacked up on wheels. But we're gittin a little close to double wide livin, y'all.
young Redneckius Americanus photographed in their natural habitat
Love the trailer stack! My father was master of adding the outbuilding "blister" -- continually extending the "barn" farther and farther back. Each new blister, as he called them, was fashioned out of an entirely different building material (whatever excess stuff he drug home) almost giving it the Brownstone effect. He'd take a saw, cut a hole in the outside wall which became the doorway into the new room and build around it. However, each subsequent blister also became lower ceiling'ed. Every new roof had to begin below the overhang of the previous roof, and slant downward from there. No one could stand upright in the last three additions. Of course he didn't see the need in wasting valuable space for "walkways" either and filled every inch of the "floor" (usually just gravel thrown on the ground)with stuff. Navigating through any of the buildings was tough, but the combination of low ceilings, uneven & littered floors, and lack of any windows or other circulation made venturing in there a real treat, especially after the bees discovered it, too. He finally began building at a right angle to the original complex, to accomodate the newly acquired tractor (dragged home from somewhere). However, once completed, he came to the realization that he had built it to the right dimensions for the machine, just not to accomodate a man atop it. He tried to drive it in a couple of times, flattening out over the top while still manning the pedals and turning the wheel which suffocatingly pressed into his ribs, but the tractor finally came to know the underside of a tarp, at the edge of the woods, as home. It was the bane of my mother's existence and she eventually (after Dad passed away) had everything dismantled, hauled away and a sweet little pole building erected in it's stead. I am homesick for the hideousness of the old outbuildings.
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