An elegy for perhaps America’s most misunderstood and underappreciated demographic, this piece first appeared in Homeworks: A Book of Tennessee Writers (University of Tennessee Press, 1996) and is reprinted here with permission of the author.
"A crazy redneck is addled as a cinch; a stubborn or contrary one will argue with a signpost and take the wrong road home. If a redneck really admires you, he thinks you hung the moon. If you displease him he will get madder’n a wet hen, mad as a hornet, sore as a risin’, and be on you like a duck on a June bug."
ah! the language of good country people, forged over centuries by the hammer, fire, and anvil of fields, local lore, struggle, joy, fiddle songs, front-porch sitters, hymns, Scripture, travelers' stories and tent revivals.
I knew similar among urban Irish and Irish-Americans whose memory or received tradition had roots in far fields, and who delighted in well turned phrases with smiles and eyes lit.
Oscar Wilde, a wild Irishman said brevity was the soul of wit. He also said, “A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”
We have become cynical, flat, same, unforgiving, stupid, no longer turning, like a craftsman, our phrases and stories, but sloganing (I hope that sounds dumb.), serving up canned hash with word salads, keeping politicos and advertisers not too impatient for Pavlovian response. The market, our public square, demands stupidity.
Our folk folk used to be stubborn in the face of stupidity, toward whomever was spewing it. Dare we say they had been inoculated by their formation in word. Thus distrust toward snake-oil salesmen, judging books by covers, whitened sepulchers etc. In this they refused to be reduced to being fans, that's short for fanatics. Listen to what a man says and doesn't say and measure it against the words of sages and saints and their best friend, God.
The old talk urban and rural, had an intelligence and a healthy skepticism, cautionary tales too. Now we just press the button on the trap door, and fall for it all. On Halloween be haunted by the great story-tellers, preachers and poets even as the ghouls approach to eat.
Lord, Lord, I must be a redneck. I know just about every one of those colloquillisms. 'Course I am an Oklahoman. We are known for accomodating a number of shades of red: redneck, redskin, red land and MAGA red.
"A crazy redneck is addled as a cinch; a stubborn or contrary one will argue with a signpost and take the wrong road home. If a redneck really admires you, he thinks you hung the moon. If you displease him he will get madder’n a wet hen, mad as a hornet, sore as a risin’, and be on you like a duck on a June bug."
ah! the language of good country people, forged over centuries by the hammer, fire, and anvil of fields, local lore, struggle, joy, fiddle songs, front-porch sitters, hymns, Scripture, travelers' stories and tent revivals.
I knew similar among urban Irish and Irish-Americans whose memory or received tradition had roots in far fields, and who delighted in well turned phrases with smiles and eyes lit.
Oscar Wilde, a wild Irishman said brevity was the soul of wit. He also said, “A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”
We have become cynical, flat, same, unforgiving, stupid, no longer turning, like a craftsman, our phrases and stories, but sloganing (I hope that sounds dumb.), serving up canned hash with word salads, keeping politicos and advertisers not too impatient for Pavlovian response. The market, our public square, demands stupidity.
Our folk folk used to be stubborn in the face of stupidity, toward whomever was spewing it. Dare we say they had been inoculated by their formation in word. Thus distrust toward snake-oil salesmen, judging books by covers, whitened sepulchers etc. In this they refused to be reduced to being fans, that's short for fanatics. Listen to what a man says and doesn't say and measure it against the words of sages and saints and their best friend, God.
The old talk urban and rural, had an intelligence and a healthy skepticism, cautionary tales too. Now we just press the button on the trap door, and fall for it all. On Halloween be haunted by the great story-tellers, preachers and poets even as the ghouls approach to eat.
Lord, Lord, I must be a redneck. I know just about every one of those colloquillisms. 'Course I am an Oklahoman. We are known for accomodating a number of shades of red: redneck, redskin, red land and MAGA red.