Cultural Studies

Evan McElravy, whose blog used to be called Redneck with Books, presents a fluid, catholic vision of redneckhood.

Comments

[the regulator]

He's pretty much on target. As someone who has lived in New Jersey (more rednecks than you might imagine), Oregon (lots of em outside of Portland), Louisiana (duh), Texas (duh), and Florida (duh), AND is a Wal-Mart shopper, I can say that I have a good sense of the breed.

[temujin334]

Ah, his comments about Hunter S. Thompson bring a smile to my face. I once worked with a guy who loved Thompson and thought that the fact that I was from the South was proof that I was some uncultured hayseed. Joke was on him, me being from the South has no relation to me being an uncultured hayseed.

Seriously, I then went to work with the same company he was at and listen as they talked about the South as if it were some far away land with mud huts and covered wagons. I was waiting for the "Did you have electricity when you lived in Alabama?" question.

[Number 6]

Electricity in Alabama? There's a quandry; you need the 'lectric to tune in to WWF, but lights bring with them the danger of high-falutin book learnin.

[David]

I can verify that there are rednecks in Connecticut. Ten minutes from my apartment is a bar with a mechanical bull patron by people dressed like either Roy Rogers.

[David]

or Luke Perry in 8 seconds.

[dhex]

do guidos count as rednecks?

[eth4n]

Jim Goad "Redneck Manifesto," explains this all. Go buy it it's a good quick read.

[David]

dhex,

I've seen Italian rednecks(family members, to my chagrin), and non-Italian guidos, so I'd put them in sort of a hybrid sub-category.

[Deacon Blues]

When I was working at Badger Engineers in Cambridge, Massachusetts I was amazed at the images of Alabama that my co-workers had. I was asked what was the weirdest thing I had ever eaten I answered "squid". The questioner then said, "That's not weird, we have that here all the time". She thought I would say opposum. I said "That's not weird". Actually I have never eaten 'possum and I don't know anyone who has. I had a greta time in Boston and Cambridge, even though I got thrown out of the MIT Bar.

[dhex]

oh, you need not tell me, david...iranian guidos, black guidos, greek guidos (almost an unnecessary distinction) etc...but you don't really see rednecks until you hit upstate new york. but guidos out on long island have a rednecky quality to them, and all that changes is the manner of dress (and the amount of money spent on crap).

so maybe guidos are middle-class rednecks who have escaped their fate only to be chained to a far larger, more hair-gelled rock?

[joe]

The people from Southie who rioted when the public schools were integrated?

Greennecks.

[Nathan]

I've seen Italian rednecks(family members, to my chagrin)

Same here (on my dad's side, although there's no chagrin on this end). WVa and western PA are full of 'em.

[Mo]

CA has a surprisingly large redneck culture. You don?t even have to venture too far from the city. One of my buddies in SD went to a monster truck rally (he?s from DFW area originally and also lived in Jackson, MS) and said he was "counting teeth." He said he and his girlfriend had more teeth between them than some families. He also commented that hadn?t seen that many Confederate Flag bumper stickers in a long time.

The one time I went to TX, I was surprised to see fewer pickup trucks than I see in the OC (the place, not the show).

[Muggs]

I can agree with David. Once you get away from the major towns in Connecticut, it's all redneck country, particularly in the Naugatuck Valley and Litchfield County.

[David]

I can agree with David. Once you get away from the major towns in Connecticut, it's all redneck country, particularly in the Naugatuck Valley and Litchfield County.

Muggs,

Are you from the Valley area? It's pretty redneck once you get near Western MA too.

[Native NYer]

What about all the wierdo freaks Lovecraft wrote about in the western hills of MA? If those Arkham natives weren't rednecks, who were?

[joe]

Arkham was near the coast. You're thinking of Dunwich.

Yes, I've started reading HP Lovecraft, thanks to you all.

[Nylarhothep]

Welcome, joe *sound of shrill pipes, savage drums, and gelatinous bubbling ichor*

[linguist]

I too can vouch for rednecks being pretty much omnipresent.

But here's something: Evan points out that redneckedness is not necessarily related to religiosity, intelligence or literacy. But he doesn't really show that there is no link to literacy. Seems to me a big differentiating factor between rednecks and "the rest of us" or whatever is education.

Another thought I had romanticises the culture a bit but, really, in humanity's past weren't we all rednecks? I mean, isn't redneckdom a natural state of our species?

[linguist]

Another thought. Jesse used "redneckhood", Evan used "redneckedness" and I went for "redneckdom". Anyone want to vote and standardize a term? 🙂

[David]

redneckitude!

[Muggs]

No, I'm in Hamden, but I went to Catholic HS with some of the Valley's finest, as well as being a product rep in the Waterbury and Derby Home Depots.(Now there's a bastion of redneckitude.)

[Akira_MacKenzie]

"What about all the wierdo freaks Lovecraft wrote about in the western hills of MA? If those Arkham natives weren't rednecks, who were?"

Joe's right, your thinking of Dunwich. However, Innsmouth was just outside of Arkham and it seemed pretty trashy... not to mention fishy.

[The Wine Commonsewer]

I pulled off the Pa Turnpike in Breezewood Pa once. I drove to the other side of the tracks in search of a cold drink and walked into the Twilight Zone. The store had well-worn bare wood floors, there wasn't any child in the store wearing shoes and no adult wearing teeth. It was no less shocking than walking across the border from San Diego to Tijuana is (or was) and maybe more so.

Not in Kansas Anymore Regards, TWC

[Jesse Walker]

In Breezewood? Is there anything there besides that strip of motels and fast-food joints?

If there were ever a town that existed purely for the purpose of selling food and beds to travelers, I would have thought that was it. (Well, that and Sea-Tac.)

[kevrob]

dhex -

Growing up on Lawn Island, there was redneckitude aplenty. Go far enough east in Suffolk County and you started running into families who had been around since 16-ought-whatever, tuned their TVs and radios north to Connecticut and Rhode Island to catch Red Sox games, farmed, raised poultry, hunted for the table and fished for a living. When the Catholic parish my family belonged to was young (c. 1907), the church was moved on greased skids from the outskirts of town into the village, due to harassment by the Klan.

When Levitt and the other post-war developers turned the potato fields and scrub pine into instant suburbia, those new homes filled up with, as an anonymous poster to Evan McElravy's blog put it, ....the kids and grandkids of Irish and Italians who make up a majority of the cops, firemen, and middle managers in city businesses. In my family's case, it was teachers, and our clan had been summering on the Island ever since my Dad's uncle picked up some seaside bungalows during tax sales before WWII, so my siblings and I grew up as "country cousins". I had classmates whose preferred job outside of school hours wasn't a paper route, but going out on the Great South Bay in a clam boat. For several the family business was duck farming, and an afternoon's leisure was to walk through the sheds shooting rats. Quite a contrast to my buddy John S.'s Pop, who worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory, splitting protons. Most important, was that nobody thought any of this was strange. Oh, sure, some old guy at the Masonic lodge might have grumbled about the countryside getting cluttered up with faux Colonials, the town having to install sewers, and the shopping mall on the LIE "stealing business" from merchants in the village, but on the whole the old-time families cashed in big, either by selling land to the home builders, or by selling everything else to the newcomers.

One of our town's radio stations even started a country music show in the late 60s, well before WHN in New York adopted the format. If I wanted a little George and Tammy when they were playing regular programming, I could depend on an FM out of Waterbury, CT.

I'm recounting how things were ~30-40 or more years ago, and things may be different now. While we wouldn't have called country folk rednecks back then on eastern L.I., we'd have recognized the type.

Kevin