Tuesday, August 10, 2004
Erudite Redneck in Repose
By The Erudite Redneck
The rain beat me to the back yard, damn it all, so here I sit on the “porch” of my house, ready and willing to finish mowing my yard but not able, unless I want to get soaked, which I don’t.
This is a “porch,” by the way, only in the academic sense: the front entrance to my house. There’s a roof. Out there is the yard. The door is to my left. I’m sitting on a bench, watching it shower. A real porch would have room for a dance, or at least three couples two-stepping, and this one doesn’t. Ah. Life in the suburbs.
In my right hand, between my index finger and dirty finger, is a $2.95 cigar, which, around here, passes for upscale. On the bench to my left is a martini glass, filled with a by-God martini: Beefeater gin, healthy splash of vermouth, toothpick spearing three olives.
In my lap is a book, a vintage history of the cattle business in the 1860s-1890. It unabashedly gives the cattlemen’s point of view of Western expansion and the Indian “problem,” that is, the Indian wars on the Northern Plains. It is a jewel. It neither glorifies the cattleman nor denigrates the Indians.
Those times were what they were, and this book is what it is: Just the facts, from the cattleman’s point of view. Ernest Staples Osgood wrote it in the 1920s, before the politically correct crowd started trying to take over the history profession. It is called “The Day of the Cattleman.” It just happens to be the book I’m reading today. I try to read 100 pages every day, all the time, of whatever I’m reading, but I slip sometimes.
At my feet is a black bobtail cat named “Mao.” She showed up on 9/11, I’m told; I was stranded in Washington, D.C., that day, and cannot testify to the veracity of Mao’s origins here on the place. But that’s what the redheads say, and I believe them. The redheads are Dr. Erudite Redhead, also known as She Who Is My Wife, and the redheaded redneck stepchild, who will be a college freshman in a couple of weeks, living in the same dorm I lived in 20 years ago. Twenty years ago.
Mao has been here, they say, since she showed up on 9/11. The cat was here, coming and going, for a few months, before she got the name “Mao.” I realized that’s what she said all the time the next December, when I was hip deep in China history for a graduate seminar.
In the back yard, away from my hearing but close to my heart, are a couple of hounds. Actually, they’re a little sophisticated to be called that.
One is a Pembroke Welsh corgi by the name of “Riker,” as in Capt. Jean-Luc Picard’s No. 1. Riker is my stepdog, and he is the single sweetest animal I have ever known, and I’ve owned a lot of dogs. The other is named Bailey, and I don’t know why; it’s the name my redheaded redneck stepchild picked for him. It fits. He’s just a dang dog. A weenie dog.
Both of them have papers. Riker, well trained, lives up to his pedigree. Bailey constantly lives up to my lowest expectations. But he’s a sweet critter. He, and his origins in a poor part of town, inspired the best redneck joke I’ve ever heard, and I came up with it.
Bailey was sired on a place where the yard was small but the house was rambling and so was the family; three or four generations of two or three different stripes of folks involving more than a few “nuclear” families. And I thought: “Dang. If yer dog’s got papers, and yer kids don’t … you might be a redneck.”
Feel free to forward that to Foxworthy. All I want is $25 for it. Seriously.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I b’lieve I’ll go fry them weeinies that I know are in the icebox, and enjoy them on some white bread with mustard, and some Fritos, and some milk. I will be back.
…
… I’m back. My heart is racing, probably because of what I just had for supper: Six skillet-fried weenies on three pieces of white bread, with some mustard, and a couple of handfuls of Fritos, and a glass of milk, and some Chips Ahoy! cookies for dessert. Hell, that definitely makes up for the lightly breaded flounder, vegetables and ice water I had for dinner today.
Where was I? Welp, I was on the “porch,” and now I’m in My Room.
It’s a “home office,” but it’s really just the third of four bedrooms in this house, which was built in 1987, when a “great room” was a relatively new concept in Oklahoma – and now it just means that if you want to be in the “living room” you can’t get away from the noise of the kitchen, and if you want to be in the kitchen, you can’t get away from the noise of the living room, and the fact is that I’d much rather prefer a home built around the situation that I grew up with, and that was this: Some of us used to sit in the living room while others of us worked in kitchen fixing dinner or supper. It don’t matter to me, really, which of us, women or men, sits and which of us does the fixing, it’s just that neither can really get away from the other in this house, and that sucks, because there was a certain dignity in both stations of life, which is now lost.
My Room is filled with a lifetime of collecting books and … toys, like the plastic Jesus nightlight poking up out of broken coffee cup with a cow on it -- and that is another story.
In front of the house is a 2-ought-ought-2 Dodge four-wheel drive pickup truck, with a trailer ball that has been used precisely twice: to haul a high school homecoming float in 2003 and again in 2004. The 4WD has been used about five times – to get me into precarious situations, not to get me out.
The truck has four doors, running boards, and is the closest thing to a Cowboy Cadillac I ever thought I’d own . I love it in spite of the $6,000-plus worth of hail damage it got last June – since repaired – and in spite of the fact that it needs new tires, which used to mean it was time to trade because it’s easier to trade vehicles nowadays than to buy a set of damn tires – but I swear I will drive this truck until my kid gets at least halfway through college.
The house is native stone, the only one on the block, and the lot is about 9,000 square feet, which, if yer counting, is about one-fifth of an acre, which ain’t very damn much for someone who grew up on a farm, with cows and sows and plows and every other such thing that used to distinguish country folks from city folks.
Now, anyone with a John Deere ridin’ lawn mower and a gimme cap from Lowe’s can claim to be a country person. Bull shit. I am a country boy whether I’m wearin’ a suit and tie, or a T-shirt and Wranglers. Which raises the only point I meant to make.
A 40-year-old man wearin’ a pair of khaki britches, a fine-point Oxford-cloth shirt and a pair of Redwing work boots, topped with a sweaty-dirty Resistol dating to the mid-1980s, readin’ a book on the cattle bidness, smokin’ a high-dollar store-bought ceegar, and sippin’ some top-shelf gin and cheap vermouth in a fancy glass with a stem, all on a so-called “porch” -- that’s one image of the Erudite Redneck in repose, which I was this evenin’.
END
The rain beat me to the back yard, damn it all, so here I sit on the “porch” of my house, ready and willing to finish mowing my yard but not able, unless I want to get soaked, which I don’t.
This is a “porch,” by the way, only in the academic sense: the front entrance to my house. There’s a roof. Out there is the yard. The door is to my left. I’m sitting on a bench, watching it shower. A real porch would have room for a dance, or at least three couples two-stepping, and this one doesn’t. Ah. Life in the suburbs.
In my right hand, between my index finger and dirty finger, is a $2.95 cigar, which, around here, passes for upscale. On the bench to my left is a martini glass, filled with a by-God martini: Beefeater gin, healthy splash of vermouth, toothpick spearing three olives.
In my lap is a book, a vintage history of the cattle business in the 1860s-1890. It unabashedly gives the cattlemen’s point of view of Western expansion and the Indian “problem,” that is, the Indian wars on the Northern Plains. It is a jewel. It neither glorifies the cattleman nor denigrates the Indians.
Those times were what they were, and this book is what it is: Just the facts, from the cattleman’s point of view. Ernest Staples Osgood wrote it in the 1920s, before the politically correct crowd started trying to take over the history profession. It is called “The Day of the Cattleman.” It just happens to be the book I’m reading today. I try to read 100 pages every day, all the time, of whatever I’m reading, but I slip sometimes.
At my feet is a black bobtail cat named “Mao.” She showed up on 9/11, I’m told; I was stranded in Washington, D.C., that day, and cannot testify to the veracity of Mao’s origins here on the place. But that’s what the redheads say, and I believe them. The redheads are Dr. Erudite Redhead, also known as She Who Is My Wife, and the redheaded redneck stepchild, who will be a college freshman in a couple of weeks, living in the same dorm I lived in 20 years ago. Twenty years ago.
Mao has been here, they say, since she showed up on 9/11. The cat was here, coming and going, for a few months, before she got the name “Mao.” I realized that’s what she said all the time the next December, when I was hip deep in China history for a graduate seminar.
In the back yard, away from my hearing but close to my heart, are a couple of hounds. Actually, they’re a little sophisticated to be called that.
One is a Pembroke Welsh corgi by the name of “Riker,” as in Capt. Jean-Luc Picard’s No. 1. Riker is my stepdog, and he is the single sweetest animal I have ever known, and I’ve owned a lot of dogs. The other is named Bailey, and I don’t know why; it’s the name my redheaded redneck stepchild picked for him. It fits. He’s just a dang dog. A weenie dog.
Both of them have papers. Riker, well trained, lives up to his pedigree. Bailey constantly lives up to my lowest expectations. But he’s a sweet critter. He, and his origins in a poor part of town, inspired the best redneck joke I’ve ever heard, and I came up with it.
Bailey was sired on a place where the yard was small but the house was rambling and so was the family; three or four generations of two or three different stripes of folks involving more than a few “nuclear” families. And I thought: “Dang. If yer dog’s got papers, and yer kids don’t … you might be a redneck.”
Feel free to forward that to Foxworthy. All I want is $25 for it. Seriously.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I b’lieve I’ll go fry them weeinies that I know are in the icebox, and enjoy them on some white bread with mustard, and some Fritos, and some milk. I will be back.
…
… I’m back. My heart is racing, probably because of what I just had for supper: Six skillet-fried weenies on three pieces of white bread, with some mustard, and a couple of handfuls of Fritos, and a glass of milk, and some Chips Ahoy! cookies for dessert. Hell, that definitely makes up for the lightly breaded flounder, vegetables and ice water I had for dinner today.
Where was I? Welp, I was on the “porch,” and now I’m in My Room.
It’s a “home office,” but it’s really just the third of four bedrooms in this house, which was built in 1987, when a “great room” was a relatively new concept in Oklahoma – and now it just means that if you want to be in the “living room” you can’t get away from the noise of the kitchen, and if you want to be in the kitchen, you can’t get away from the noise of the living room, and the fact is that I’d much rather prefer a home built around the situation that I grew up with, and that was this: Some of us used to sit in the living room while others of us worked in kitchen fixing dinner or supper. It don’t matter to me, really, which of us, women or men, sits and which of us does the fixing, it’s just that neither can really get away from the other in this house, and that sucks, because there was a certain dignity in both stations of life, which is now lost.
My Room is filled with a lifetime of collecting books and … toys, like the plastic Jesus nightlight poking up out of broken coffee cup with a cow on it -- and that is another story.
In front of the house is a 2-ought-ought-2 Dodge four-wheel drive pickup truck, with a trailer ball that has been used precisely twice: to haul a high school homecoming float in 2003 and again in 2004. The 4WD has been used about five times – to get me into precarious situations, not to get me out.
The truck has four doors, running boards, and is the closest thing to a Cowboy Cadillac I ever thought I’d own . I love it in spite of the $6,000-plus worth of hail damage it got last June – since repaired – and in spite of the fact that it needs new tires, which used to mean it was time to trade because it’s easier to trade vehicles nowadays than to buy a set of damn tires – but I swear I will drive this truck until my kid gets at least halfway through college.
The house is native stone, the only one on the block, and the lot is about 9,000 square feet, which, if yer counting, is about one-fifth of an acre, which ain’t very damn much for someone who grew up on a farm, with cows and sows and plows and every other such thing that used to distinguish country folks from city folks.
Now, anyone with a John Deere ridin’ lawn mower and a gimme cap from Lowe’s can claim to be a country person. Bull shit. I am a country boy whether I’m wearin’ a suit and tie, or a T-shirt and Wranglers. Which raises the only point I meant to make.
A 40-year-old man wearin’ a pair of khaki britches, a fine-point Oxford-cloth shirt and a pair of Redwing work boots, topped with a sweaty-dirty Resistol dating to the mid-1980s, readin’ a book on the cattle bidness, smokin’ a high-dollar store-bought ceegar, and sippin’ some top-shelf gin and cheap vermouth in a fancy glass with a stem, all on a so-called “porch” -- that’s one image of the Erudite Redneck in repose, which I was this evenin’.
END
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This is nicely written, but cigars stink! And all that alcohol has to be bad for your liver. Of course, I love chocolate bars and diet Coke. The chocolate is full of at and the diet Coke full of chemicals. Life is unfair. :)
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