The Redneck Guide to Raisin' Children (9 page)

You can chop up the rest of the chest for kindling wood.

Toothpaste
—For the price of a tube of toothpaste these days, you could buy two tickets to the county fair and have enough left over to dunk the smart-mouthed clown.

Some of the most expensive brands are the ones with baking soda in them, and that's just plain funny. We were raised brushing our teeth with baking soda—the box kind, not the fancy tube kind—and now it's fashionable!

You can get a box of Arm & Hammer baking soda for pocket change. That box will last for months—even if your kids religiously brush their teeth every two weeks.

Shampoo
—When kids get around to finally washing their hair, they always slap on too much shampoo. So buy the cheapest brand, something not seen on TV.

If you buy a TV-advertised product, you're just helping pay the salaries of all those beautiful models with “lustrous, shining, glorious hair.”

After buying a bottle of bargain shampoo, pour half of it into an empty bottle and fill both up with water. You'll have two bottles for the price of one!

Thriftiness is a way of life in our family. Aunt Alma's still using a bottle of White Rain shampoo she bought in the fifties. And she's the only person we know who still Minipoos her hair.

Groceries
—One way to save on your food bills is to starve your kids all weekend, then take 'em to a cheap “all you can eat” buffet restaurant on Sunday night. Your young'uns will go into a feeding frenzy, and hopefully you can hustle them out the door before the owner calls the cops.

The Britches of Mayhew County

Let the uppity city kids keep their neatly pressed designer slacks and pointy Italian shoes. When you're rounding up pants and other duds for your young'uns, be sensible and cheap.

Britches
—Buy used Levi's, Lee's, Wrangler, and Dickies work pants. They're the only britches that can be legally sold in Mayhew County, thanks to a 1959 law passed by the county commission.

These brands will wear forever and you never have to iron 'em. We bet that if anybody tried to open a laundry business specializing in pressing Levi's, the fool would go out of business in an hour.

Footwear
—Always buy shoes two sizes too big and let your kids grow into them. If the shoes flop around too much on their feet, stick pieces of cardboard behind their heels.

When your boys and girls get older and start whining for boots, find them a cheap pair at a yard sale. That'll have to do until they start earning money and can buy fancy boots made from the skins of rattlesnakes, ostriches, alligators, or roadkill.

Hats
—When buying hats for your young'uns, you've got only two choices: bill caps or cowboy hats.

Pick a cap with a slogan on it. The most prized is a “Cat hat”—one that says Caterpillar on it. Funeral home caps run a close second. Rednecks wouldn't give you a dime for a cap with a polo club emblem.

The average redneck keeps a selection of caps at home, at work, behind his truck seat, and in the outhouse. We know people who've got more caps than IQ points.

Don't buy your young'uns a beret. Rednecks would rather get caught naked in a gay bar than be seen wearing a beret in public. Even Big John Wayne looked kind of sissy wearing one in
The Green Berets.

Socks
—White-sock makers would be out of business if it wasn't for rednecks and tennis players. That's the only color we ever buy—because they show the world we've got clean feet.

If you send your kid to school wearing colored socks with fancy patterns, you're just asking for him to get ridiculed. You might as well put big yellow clown shoes on him.

The only time rednecks wear black socks is when they've got on white shoes. We're big on “contrast.”

Neckties
—No self-respecting redneck young'un would ever own a necktie. If they need one for a wedding or some such nonsense, send 'em down the street to borrow one. Or slap a curtain sash around their neck and cut it to the proper length.

Night of the Living T-shirt

When it's warm, redneck kids like to sleep buck-naked until they're maybe ten years old. And when they need something to wear at night in winter, there's no need to blow a wad on fancy name brand pajamas or nightgowns.

Your old T-shirts will do just fine. If your potbelly or bosom stretched them out a bit, so much the better.

Rufus McKinney's potbelly is so big he can stand in two zip codes at once, and young teenagers go wild over his T-shirts. Sheriff Gardner says they've got a street value of one hundred fifty dollars each.

'Course, they've got to be washed six or seven times because they're so dirty. And the Lord only knows what little invisible critters might be living on 'em. We've heard that when Rufus takes off a T-shirt at night, it crawls all by itself into the closet.

Look around malls and streets these days and you'll see that kids love the “baggy” look. They don't even realize that rednecks have been wearing baggy ripped clothes since the beginning of time.

We were “grungy” when “grungy” wasn't cool.

Give your older boys pocket T-shirts so they'll have a place to keep their Marlboros. If the T-shirts don't have pockets, show them how to roll up the cigarette pack in the left sleeve.

If you ain't got any extra T-shirts, toddle down to a Goodwill or Salvation Army thrift shop and buy a bunch for a quarter apiece.

Don't be embarrassed to buy secondhand clothes. We've heard of people paying fifty dollars for a pair of prewashed jeans, which is pretty dumb. It makes more sense to let the first owner prewash the jeans, then later you can buy them at a thrift shop for two bucks.

Mind-boggling treasures can be found tucked away in flea markets and secondhand stores. We make the rounds about once a month, and it never ceases to amaze us what precious things people throw away.

Last week we bought a genuine Little Jimmy Dickens—1995 World Tour T-shirt for a dime, and you could barely see the ketchup and mustard stains on it.

Our girl Betty Jean grew up sleeping in a See Rock City—Atop Lookout Mountain T-shirt that she still owns to this day. She's got it framed and hanging on her bedroom wall, just above the yellow lava lamp she's had since the sixties.

As for our son Lonnie, his favorite bedtime T-shirt is one he found lying in the middle of Old Muskrat Road four miles outside of town.

It says Lonnie's Hubcap Heaven and has a drawing of St. Peter with a smiley hubcap face, welcoming two flattened hubcaps at the pearly gates.

Buying Brand-New Duds

We've got so many stringbean boys in our town that the local 7-Eleven opened a Tall and Skinny clothing section. We hope this idea catches on nationwide so all parents can save on new garb.

Wherever you shop, never take the price tag off a shirt or pair of jeans until you're absolutely sure your young'un will keep it. If the shirt gets too tight after a few washings, or the jeans chafe a kid's crotch, you'll need the tag to return it.

Of course, this means you'll have to wash these clothes by hand while holding the tag above the water. But that's better than losing money.

Why do you think Minnie Pearl kept the price tag on her hat for years? It's because she planned on returning it someday. (Hopefully there's a Refunds and Exchanges desk in heaven.)

Manners

This shouldn't take a lot of work on your part, because redneck boys and girls just naturally have good manners. It's in their jeans.

Usually the first word out of a redneck baby's mouth ain't “Mama,” it's “Ma'am.” (Except for Rufus McKinney's fat little boy, Elmer—his first word was “Spam.”)

You can learn a lot about teaching a kid to be courteous by watching
The Andy Griffith Show.
You'll see that little Opie is always polite and well-mannered.

Opie never gets out of line because he wants to make his daddy, Sheriff Andy, proud of him—and because Deputy Barney always carries that dreaded one bullet with Opie's name on it.

The Andy Griffith Show
also is a lesson in how
not
to raise your kids:

• Don't let 'em get away with throwing rocks, like Ernest T. Bass—who broke windows all over Mayberry and never once got any serious punishment for it.

• Keep 'em away from hard liquor so they won't end up the town drunk, like Otis.

• And don't let 'em change their name and become a sneaky lawyer, like Sheriff Andy did later in life.

Raise your boys and girls with love and they'll turn out fine.

But if by chance one of your young'uns ever starts to become a little smarty-pants, don't waste time putting that whippersnapper straight with a hickory switch.

Show your young'uns that Mama and Daddy care enough about them to whup their little butts!

Courtesy

Manners and courtesy go hand in hand. Teach your children to hold doors open for little old ladies, pop the caps off beer bottles for gals, and courteously swerve to just barely nick jaywalkers instead of flattening them like pancakes.

When you take the young'uns for a drive, point out that pickup truck drivers are the most courteous people on the road. Ever notice that when you're trying to get out from a side street onto a crowded highway, it's always a pickup man who slows down and waves you out?

A guy in a Mercedes won't ever do that. He's too busy talking on his car phone while rushing to his business appointments, and slowing to let you out might cause him to be three seconds late.

If you want to get away from blaring horns, head out into redneck country. Rednecks almost never honk their horn unless it's to get a cow or a drunk jaywalker off the road—or just for fun, to aggravate some jerk on a car phone.

Your kids also should be raised to believe in fair play, something that's ingrained in every redneck.

If you don't believe it, trying bullying some little guy in a redneck bar. You'll find yourself tackled by six good ol' boys and you'll wake up outside in the gutter—with your teeth still inside the bar, talking to your missing ear.

An experience like this can scar you for life. Luckily people in Mayhew County who've lost ears in bar fights and fingers in gun accidents can get help by joining a local support group, Parents without Parts.

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Marks the Pot

Ever wonder why rednecks keep an old commode in their front yard? It's so their kids, playing outside at night, won't have to keep running inside to pee.

This outside pot's also a courtesy for neighbors who can stop to relieve themselves while reeling home from the bar late at night.

But most redneck yards are just high weeds. To make the commode easier to find, put a five-foot stick beside it.

You might also want to mark the old couches and cars in your yard so kids won't trip over them.

While you're at it, stick a couple of posts on either side of your driveway—which in most redneck neighborhoods is just two tire tracks through the weeds.

Redneck Home Furnishings

Sooner or later your daughters will be living in a home of their own (hopefully, not a home for unwed mothers), and they've got to learn how to decorate the inside as well as the yard.

They might choose to furnish their house like yours, but then again they might want the place to look respectable.

Redneck home decor might not always be classy, but it's definitely in a class of its own. Instead of hiring a decorator, just have your daughter follow our suggestions:

• Bowling trophies should always be placed in your home's front windows, not in the shower or on top of the commode. Few sights are as awesome as driving down a redneck street and seeing all the bowling trophies gleaming in the sun.

• Hang a pair of genuine longhorn steer horns on the wall near the front door. Visitors can flip their cowboy hats onto the horns as they come inside. Don't let anybody throw his hat on a table—this will bring you bad luck.

• Above your couch, place a big framed picture of a soaring bald eagle and a framed collection of Indian arrowheads. A black velvet painting of John Wayne would really set off your wall decor.

• Before visitors come over, check the couch to make sure no springs are sticking out. If you find one showing, push it back down and cover the hole with two layers of duck tape.

• The best decoration for your coffee table is a bronze Western sculpture by Frederic Remington—who was the world's greatest artist except for Norman Rock-well.

Rufus McKinney has a beautiful Remington sculpture with a brass plate that says End of the Trail. It shows a weary Indian on a weary horse, with his spear pointed down to the ground.

We don't know if the sculpture is authentic or not, because the Indian is wearing a Washington Redskins jacket and the artist's signature reads Freddie Remmington. But it sure is a conversation piece.

• Keep your ironing board set up in the kitchen. It can be used as an extra table when too many relatives drop over for supper.

• Keep a spare roll of toilet paper under a pink knit cover on the commode tank top. You don't want people dirtying up your hand towels in the worst way.

• Nail some tin sheets on the roof over your bedroom. Rain beating on a tin roof is the coziest sound in the world and you'll sleep like a baby.

• Put a bug zapper in every room. Especially the bath-room.