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Nouveau Redneck
When my wife, the fetching Mrs. Intrepid Traveler, and I
moved to the family property in the country, we felt very lucky to be able
to. And when we moved here, we brought with us all the stuff accumulated from
our suburban lifestyle.
Along with the physical stuff, we also brought our urbane
attitudes and sensibilities with us to the country. We enjoy a glass of wine after a hard day of chain
sawing dead wood or herding sheep. We
appreciate tidy flower beds and we mulch around our fruit trees, but we don’t
bother to have an operational gate at the property’s entrance. The house we live in is a roughly constructed
frame structure and non-descriptive on the
outside. But on the inside, in the
remodeled kitchen, it looks like a 1900s soda shop, complete with granite
counter tops, subway tiles on the back splash and beautiful cherry wood
cabinets. We are a study in contrasts.
For New Year’s Eve we were treated to a lovely dinner of stuffed
pork tenderloin expertly prepared by our cherished neighbor, Liz. Even though Liz is originally from Long Guyland, (that’s how they say it)
New York, we still love her. She got
here as soon as she could. She displays
her own Nouveau Redneckness. She is a
highly educated world traveler yet has a tractor and a horse trailer parked in
her front yard.
I don’t know if we are really much different than the folks
who have lived out here for generations, but I have a hard time believing any
of these real locals would ever consider power washing their barn. We’ve lived here five years and I’ve
done it twice so far. Is that so
wrong? I like to power wash the tractor
too.
One of my neighbors lives in a green trailer. Several of my neighbors live in trailers, but this
green one stands out because I am not sure if it is painted green, or is
severely mildewed. I would be happy to
power wash their trailer because I am sick of looking at it when I drive by it
every day. Give me a half a day and a
water connection and I will have it clean enough that they’d probably drive
right past it, wondering where the hell their trailer went. Or, more probable, they wouldn’t even notice
the difference. I cannot figure out how
they can let that green crap growing on their house. The only explanation must be that it is a
form of color blindness. The redneck
eyeball must not be able to detect the wavelength of mildew.
The real story of redneck-ness contrasting with
sophistication is illustrated by a situation that occurred in our community last year. A family sold their
property, a 6 acre strip of woods that adjoins our property. The new owner suddenly bulldozed down all the
trees and started excavating a large pit in the middle of the land. Our
neighbors learned that the new owner is a company that clears debris from construction sites. This company purchased
the land with the intent to use it to burn the debris that was brought in. This would have been a horrible eyesore. In
addition to the noise, the smoke and smell that would have come from the activity would have been awful.
I feared that this was going to be a tough battle to get this
activity stopped before it started. Most
companies have more money and lawyers than individuals do. They overwhelm the citizens who live in the
area by doing all kinds of legal maneuvering. I figured that the burning would go on for
years before we could get the legal system to stop it. We had a neighborhood meeting at the local
church to discuss the matter. In that
meeting we found that some of our neighbors, the uncultured rubes who live in
trailers and have hound dogs on the porch, actually are intelligent, educated
and well spoken. We learned that of the
dozen or so folks in the meeting there were environmental scientists, and
people who work with the county and state involving environmental regulations
and permits. It also turns out that the
property that was bull dozed has deed restrictions against any type of commercial
activity.
Our group of rednecks, the simple folks, were able to
mobilize and work together to make the owner of the company aware of the
situation. The owner stopped the
development of the property and no burning ever happened. Caulk up a win for the Rednecks. The land has since been sold again to an individual who has fenced it and had a small stock tank dug on it. He has plans to build a house there one day.
I am proud to know my neighbors. I hope we can have other opportunities to get
together. But I hope it is not the same
kind of circumstances. Maybe something fun,
like pulling a truck out of the muck or have an old fashioned barn
raising. But then, maybe, they look at my
house and figure I am the LAST guy they would ask to help them build anything. Damn, am I being pre-judged by these country
rubes? Probably.
