Skidding in Sideways

On any given day depending on what uniform I’m wearing, I am Doctor to my patients, Sir to the Army, Officer to those I arrest, Dad to my kids, Baby to my wife and Asshole to the guy I just flipped off for cutting me off in traffic. I am the southern red neck you’ve always heard about and country by the grace of god. I am the ordinary man you see every day. The one you never look twice at in Walmart or notice as I walk by. I am not famous, nor chummy with someone who is. I am not a millionaire and I don’t do fucking reality shows. (Hate that shit) This book is about him. The regular guy that makes up the back bone of society and the majority of this country.

Let me start by telling you this. I am from the south, and this is pretty much written the way I speak and think. I cuss a lot and sometimes in Technicolor. I don’t apologize for this. It’s my book I’ll talk the way I want. Anyhow, it gives it character, and we down here are all about characters. If I offend you, oh well, get your money back, I don’t have a dog in that hunt. None of this is directed at you personally, hell, I don’t even know you. I want to also point out to you Yankees. Just cause I talk slow doesn’t mean I am. We do have indoor shitters, shoes on are feet and my sister aint my mom. Course I can’t speak for everyone. In the south there are three things that are sacred and untouchable: Church, family and football. No matter where you go in these parts, anyone will be able to tell you all you want to about any and all of them, especially football. Hell for some of us football is church.

We have the stigma down here that Yankees seem to use as a measuring stick for us southern folk. We talk a little different, eat things y’all think belong in a hog pen and some of our words aren’t the same, but we are Americans through and through. If you have never eaten road kill, raccoon, gator, frog, possum or squirrel you have nothing to say about it. It’s some good eating so don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. Check your history, a good number of things came from the south that everyone benefits from today starting with Moonshine, Nascar, air conditioning, Charlie Danials, Duck Dynasty and Swamp people just to name a few. A few words to the wise for you Yankee tourists, don’t get liquored up and start talking about how y’all whipped our ass in the civil war. Someone is gonna get pissed and be on your ass like a tic on a hound and good’ole southern hospitality is going to disappear quick, fast and in a hurry. We’re still kinda touchy about that.

There were rules to being a kid then and you followed them or took your licks. It was simple, you didn’t speak around grownups if they were talking. You had a” sir or ma’am” on the end of every sentence. “No” was it, end of discussion. You got told/asked to do something, once after that it was your ass. You had chores that were done before anything else and the same went for homework. You never even dreamed of raising your voice or sassing, that was a guaranteed ass whooping. And an ass whooping was just that, an event that made it all crystal clear and unforgettable. School disputes were settled after school with your fists and then it was over. TV was an hour or two before bed, maybe, and that’s if all your other shit was squared away. I could do this all day but I need to get on with this. The point is, it‘s not like that anymore.

It’s hot as hell in the south in the summer. I mean like two rats screwing in a wool sock kinda hot. Anyone who has been down here knows what I’m talking about. It really isn’t the temperature so much as the humidity. Hell, on any given day its 95 degrees with 98% humididty. It’s like living in a fish tank. I loved being a kid. The summer was forever and the greatest adventures I could dream up to make a reality. There was frog catching and gigging, and I mean not just a few either. We’re talking by the bucket full. It was always a source of curiosity to me how the next day there were considerably fewer in the bucket than the day before. I think some got away with a little help from my mom. Course she would and did deny it. I have caught some big ass bullfrogs none of which I’m pretty sure could lift a brick on top of a plank of wood on top of a bucket. Just a guess though.

Gopher hunting with your daisy BB gun was restricted to only those who had one and the best friend of the day allowed to come with them. Prowess was measured by actually being able to kill one. A very difficult thing to accomplish when you make a lot of noise, you smell, have no idea what you’re doing and can’t shoot for shit. Besides, trying to kill a gopher at 50 yards when the range on your daisy is only at best 25, just compounds the issue. None of this was a deterrent to us to go on safari every summer trying to catch squirrels, raccoons, birds and other assorted wildlife so we could try and talk our parents into letting us keep it, to make it “Our Pet”. I spent hours and hours holding that string attached to the stick that held up the cardboard box waiting for some critter to go under it to eat the peanut butter on a piece of bread. Remember that shit!? I never caught a dam thing except the neighbor’s cat and it took off with the box and the bread.