The Redneck Guide to Raisin' Children (6 page)

• Don't let your sons join their buddies in outhouse races.

This is a game where several teams of kids uproot outhouses and see which team can carry theirs to the town limits first. Problem is, they never take the outhouse holes—and Lord knows who might fall in one of them smelly pits.

Reverend Joshua Boatwright stumbled right into our neighbor's hole one dark night while taking a shortcut home from a tent revival, and we've never heard such language come out of a minister's mouth. We thought he'd been possessed by the devil, or Howard Stern.

Entertaining in the Outhouse

Going to the little shack out back can be a fun experience if you just listen to our advice:

• Keep reading material in the outhouse so your young'uns can improve their minds while they wait.

But don't leave a
Playboy
out there, or you might never see your sons on weekends.

The
Weekly World News
is a good reading choice for the outhouse. This lively supermarket newspaper is easy to read, lets you keep up with all the latest Elvis sightings, and is a lot more kind to your behind than Time's hard, shiny pages.

• Keep the outhouse furnishings simple and free of clutter. You want your kids to get in and get out as soon as possible, not sit in there and dawdle.

Don't allow the boys to stick sexy Reba McEntire posters on the walls, and don't let the girls put up a mirror to pretty themselves while they're inside. Distractions like that will just lead to squabbles when one kid hogs the outhouse.

Shorty Perkins, who got a bit uppity after buying one-eighth interest in the Swifty gas station, decided to fix his outhouse real fancy. He strung an electrical line out to it and put in a lightbulb. Then he added a frosted globe over the bulb.

Next thing we knew, Shorty had installed a color TV and VCR so his wife, Pauline, could watch her
Love Boat
tape collection while she was on the pot.

Only problem was, Rufus McKinney found out about the color television and started sneaking into Shorty's outhouse to watch the Daytona 500 and other races.

Rufus—who didn't have a TV at that time—would always lock the door. It got to where Shorty and Pauline couldn't even use their own outhouse.

Finally all hell broke loose on the day Shorty got a bad case of the runs—and it just happened to be the same day as the Coca-Cola 600 over in Charlotte. Rufus wasn't about to be disturbed during that big once-a-year event and even brought along his twelve-gauge shotgun to keep away disturbers.

Shorty hung around the outhouse door, banging and begging and looking as agitated as a cow trying to reach a salt lick on the other side of an electrified fence. But Rufus just turned the TV up louder.

So poor Shorty was out of luck, and soon out of clean shorts.

Next day the TV and VCR got sold cheap. Shorty used the money to buy a drawerful of new BVDs and half a case of Imodium A-D.

He posted one bottle on the outhouse door in a little red box that's marked: “Break Glass in Emergency.”

Rednecks' Five Favorite TV Shows

1.
Walker, Texas Ranger

2.
Hee-Haw
(bootleg videos)

3.
The Andy Griffith Show
(pre-
Mayberry, RFD
)

4.
The Beverly Hillbillies
(reruns)

5. Fishin' shows featuring country singers

Putting the
X
Back in Christmas

Every redneck boy and girl wants a pit bull for Christmas. But these dogs are the “Gift That Keeps on Living,” and they'll eat most families out of house and home before the next Christmas arrives.

It's better to give your young'uns a stuffed pit bull. This breed is so bad about attacking people that they often get shot, and you can get a good deal on a carcass if you're in the right place at the right time. (Don't let anybody see your gun.)

Other good presents for kids are gift certificates to fast-food restaurants. Or give them batteries for Christmas, along with a card that says Toy Not Included. They're not going to like any toy you pick out anyway, so make them pay for their own.

The best places to buy Christmas gifts for a wife are gun and knife shows. And if you surprise her with a pistol of her own, don't forget the concealed weapons permit.

Husbands appreciate twelve-packs of beer, another shotgun, and a whoopee cushion for hours of rollicking entertainment down at the bar.

Uncle Billy always buys Aunt Alma romantic stuff for Christmas. We don't know where the heck he got it, but one year he gave her a bottle of French perfume labeled “Eau de Toilette Is Overflowing.” The white porcelain bottle was shaped just like a little commode.

A gift the whole family can enjoy is whole-house air conditioning. Look for bargains on used window units and buy one for every room of your home.

Wrap each unit separately in beautiful paper and stack 'em under the Christmas tree. Your kids will be expecting dolls or toy trucks—and boy, will they be surprised!

The Redneck Stock Portfolio

You want your young'uns to be financially secure when they grow up, so another good Christmas gift is a cow or a pig. They can sell it later on and start building a nest egg for their future.

If you can't afford stock for the holidays, get your kids to invest in a good animal as soon as they start making their own money.

When the market is bullish, kids can lay away a steer at some stockyards and pay only a dollar or so a month on it.

But don't let them invest in billy goat futures. Billy goats ain't got no futures. These danged critters will eat anything—and if your kid's investment gets hold of some spoiled garbage, the market will go belly up.

Hardheaded Hillbillies in a Software World

More and more kids are asking for computers for Christmas, mostly because they want to play video games.

Our young'uns are growing up in a much more complicated world than the one we grew up in. Scientists have invented so many things—most of 'em too complicated to use—that you just can't keep up with it all.

In Mayhew County the “information highway” is still just a one-lane dirt road where you have to stop and ask directions. We ain't up to date on computers, slide rules, and other wonders of the twentieth century—and don't really want to learn.

But we think it's time for your kids to know about technology, so we stuck in this section despite not knowing a durned thing about the subject.

Wiley Watkins—who claims to know something about everything—kindly set down and wrote out these definitions of some newfangled technical terms for us. We can't speak for their accuracy since we know Wiley all too well, but here goes:

software
—Uncle Billy's embarrassing condition when he's had too many beers before hittin' the sack with Aunt Alma.

hardware
—Assorted stuff, such as metal brackets and electric outlet covers, that you screw all over the outside of your computer to make it look like a junk pile so nobody will steal it. You can buy all you need at a hardware store.

boot the computer
—What you do when you can't figure out how to turn on the doggone thing. (Tony Lama bull-hides work best.)

mouse
—Your place of residence. “Wanna eat supper at m'ouse or your'n?”

RAM
—One of the best pickup trucks ever to come out of Dodge.

monitor
—An ironclad ship, crewed by a miserable bunch of Yankee lowlifes, that ambushed the proud Confederate ship
Merrimac
during the War between the States.

on-line
—Where all the cowboys and cowgirls go to when dancing starts at the local honky-tonk.

upload
—Chug-a-lugging a six-pack in six minutes flat.

download
—A quick trip to the men's room after all that beer.

fax
—A husband's version of the night's events when he comes home late. “I had a flat and there wasn't a phone for miles, honey—and them's the
fax!
”

modem
—A request for extra stuff: “Gimme mo'dem mashed potaters.”

voice mail
—This is where your phone gets cut off for nonpayment and you've got to holler at your neighbor to give her the latest gossip.

microwave
—A “wave” done by the few fans who attend football games at Chicken Neck Junior College, which hasn't won a single game since 1906. (Although one plucky team did battle Mayhew County Normal School to a 0-0 tie back in '54, giving excited fans cause to tear down the two-by-fours.)

How a redneck boots his computer

Quaint Redneck Superstitions

It's traditional for parents to pass down redneck folklore to their young'uns, and that includes superstitions. Here are some your kids ought to know about:

• If someone sweeps under your feet while you're sitting down, it means you're gonna get married. If it happens twice in the same day, you're going to get shot by her daddy if you don't make that li'l gal your wife.

• If a sweeper hits you with her broom, you're going to jail within a week.

• Don't take along your old broom when you move to a different home. It's bad luck, usually in the form of pesky neighbors who want to borrow every new kitchen appliance you buy.

• When you give someone a knife as a present, put a penny with it to bring the new owner good luck. Rufus McKinney once got a penny with a knife—and only two days later he found three cents in a truck stop urinal.

• Carry bread and salt into your new home for good luck, and also for salt-sandwich snacks in case neighbors drop over to welcome you.

• When you visit somebody, always leave out the same door you came in. Going out another door is real bad luck. Wiley Watkins went out a different door at the courthouse during his divorce trial—and the next morning his wife dropped the divorce.

• If a pregnant woman is big in the butt, she's going to have a little boy. If she's big in the belly, she's going to have a little girl. If she's fat all over, she's going to have three Little Debbie cakes as soon as she gets home.

• Throwing a hat on a table will bring a curse on you. One of the most common is chronic dandruff.

• If a little girl's second toe is bigger than her big toe, it means she'll be the boss when she gets married. This condition is the reason divorcees have to special-order shoes.

Elvis: Dead or Alive?

One of these nights it's bound to happen: As you tuck your child into bed, she'll look up at you with big, bright, wonder-filled eyes and ask, “Mommy, is there
really
an Elvis Presley?”

What are you gonna say? Tell her Elvis is dead and break her little heart?

No! Don't be cruel. Tell her the truth: The King is alive! ALIVE!!

Every redneck, and lots of nonrednecks, are fully aware that Elvis faked his death back in 1977 so the poor harassed man could go hide out and get some peace. We've seen actual pictures of Elvis riding a motorcycle in Michigan just a few years ago. And on his sixty-second birthday—January 8, 1997—Elvis was spotted in a Social Security line applying for his benefits, according to what we've read.

So when your kid asks about Mr. Presley, just smile and assure her: Yes, my child, there is an Elvis—and one of these days you just might see him in person, gobbling a four-egg peanut butter omelet with cheese hash browns down at the Waffle House!

Bedtime Stories and Lullabies

The redneck's second Bible ain't a book—it's all the great country songs.

And country music makes wonderful bedtime lullabies. Many songs are so mournful and lonesome that your young'uns will cry themselves to sleep.

A big dose of heartache works twice as fast as Sominex at bedtime, according to Professor Harland K. Sampson.

Just put a radio by your kid's bedside, tune in a country station, and within minutes she'll be sound asleep on her tearstained pillow.

And you don't have to worry about dirty lyrics. You won't find them in country songs. Our music teaches clean living and respect for women. The only “ho” you'll hear is in “hoedown.”

Country songs also will teach your young'uns to respect their parents and to never blame you for the way they turn out. Make sure your kids hear Merle Haggard's great tearjerker “Mama Tried,” in which he sings, “Mama tried to raise me better … now there's only me to blame, 'cause Mama tried.”

Religion and love for animals also are big themes in country songs. The song “Feed Jake” is about a man praying that after he kicks the bucket, his best friend—his dog—will get fed.

With all this inspiring stuff already recorded, why spend time telling bedtime stories or singing lullabies to your kids? You've got better things to do—like making more kids.