I cleaned around the stove yesterday, spurred by the odor of gas. No leak. It turns out people doing laundry late at night consumes more gas, as the clothes line doesn't work then. The propane supplier's sales records had yet to capture the change in usage.
Good morning. For the third day in a row, there is a "lake" in the street in front of my building.
Yesterday's newspaper was delivered along with today's, as promised, though they are still having production issues--meaning that the pages were kind of scrambled up, with certain features placed in sections where they don't normally appear. But apparently the Tribune was not the only paper affected, because their printing plant also handles the Sun-Times, Daily Herald, WSJ, and NYT for this area. The S-T has an article today (I read it online) that mentions how there are readers (like me) who strongly prefer print over electronic versions, for actual reasons not related to fogeyness (if that' s not a word, it should be). Apparently many people notice (and are often put out) when they can't get their paper paper--for which they pay significant $$--and now the experts are noticing that we notice. Who knew? Stop the presses!
There's something about being able to pass the comics page around the table. Referring to an online comic doesn't cut it. The moment and the connection are lost.
Reading the paper is a communal activity. It models to kids the uses and importance of reading - and that reading is a defensible form of procrastination.
When I'm done with the paper, if I'm working at the store that day, I'll leave it in the break room. Sometimes other people take a look at it. At least they know that there is such a thing as a newspaper.
And--I've got to give credit to the editors for trying to cultivate a younger and of-color audience rather than reproach them for being PC--there are prominent stories and photos about people and subjects they can relate to. The sports section does a lot of that work, but so does the front page.
I wrote this yesterday while reading a bit about JD Vance, and the complaints about his background. I may post it on the mothership.
Okay, time for some education. People are ripping on JD Vance, claiming he isn’t a hillbilly. Technically he was born in Appalachia, where most working class are Hillbillies, the remainder mostly White Trash. I reckon too many of you conflate, Redneck, Hillbilly, and White Trash, so let’s define them, so you understand the difference.
Redneck is rural/small town (sometimes suburban) working class, sometimes middle class. A plumber or electrician, or an HVAC person who starts his own company (and is successful) are likely redneck and middle class. Geographically, not New England nor Ecotopia. Variants are similar across Southern, Midwest, Plains, and Rockies.
A redneck typically did something after high school to better themselves; joining the military, apprenticeship, technical college or certificate, etc. They tend to be responsible, especially once they become parents. They may drink, but don’t drink and drive. They tend to like sports, and are active in their community, coaching, boosters, chaperones for school, etc. They dislike being looked down on, and see things a bit more clearly that others realize. They know a union job might be more likely to have layoffs, so those added benefits might disappear. They understand raising minimum results in fewer jobs for their kids. They want a safe work environment, but one where reasonable risk is acceptable. They wear hard hats for crying out loud! They were not problem students in high school, but in the past many of them had learning disabilities (My father was likely dyslexic). They enjoy sports, they made many friends in high school, but they don’t push themselves hard on their studies. They didn’t see a benefit to doing so. But at the same time they aspire for their children to do better than did they. They are not ashamed of themselves, but they have hopes for the future. In many ways Amish are rednecks. Is redneck or ‘neck an insult? Not among rednecks, but elitists earn an FU if they call someone that. It’s funny; people who know me accept me calling others a ‘neck, but if they don’t know me, they get angry if I do. I’m seen as a “redneck who done good”.
A Hillbilly is an isolated redneck. They are very clan oriented, protective of their families, and mistrust outsiders. So much so they avoid jobs/careers that take them too far away from their families. I had a white trash student at Kentucky. She drove an hour to class each day, because she refused to move closer to campus. Her goal was to become an Assistant Manager at an Arbys, at the interstate exit near where she lived. They tend to be a little lower SES from rednecks, but they still take pride in who they are. They are often geographically isolated. But they still are good folks.
White Trash are losers. Not down on their luck types. Not a redneck who got addicted to pain meds after an accident; people actually understand that one. White Trash don’t have ambition, are short sighted, living paycheck to paycheck. They rarely have any post high school training. They want cushy jobs, like many federal jobs. But they are the type to use all their sick leave as soon as they accrue it. Ten years later, instead of having 130 days accrued, they have 1. White Trash do not take care of themselves or their families. They are most likely to have kids out of wedlock and be proud of it. They feel entitled to government assistance. When you visualize the worst “Wal-Mart” shoppers, you’re visualizing White Trash. White trash can have roots in either redneck or hillbilly.
Rednecks and Hillbillies can get along, often respect each other, but also respect each other’s differences. A redneck isn’t gonna hit on a hillbilly’s daughter, knowing the father might shotgun him for doing so. But if he is a plumber, he’ll fix a hillbilly’s bathroom without any issue. If they attend the same school they run in different crowds, but they are civil to each other. But both look down on White Trash. Both don’t want their kids associating with White Trash. Both get offended being called White Trash, or having an elitist mistake them for White Trash.
Years ago I volunteered at Quaker Haven Camp for a cleanup day. I came dressed in grubbies, ready to get muddy. I enjoy that. A volunteer who didn’t know me thought I was White Trash. Imagine her embarrassment when “Dr Janney” was asked to give the lunch meal blessing, and a short talk afterwards.
I doubt JD Vance is really a Hillbilly. He was born in Appalachia (Jackson, Kentucky), so that likely qualifies him as a Hillbilly, technically. Middletown is full of rednecks and white trash, but is a good 30 minute drive from the “Appalachian border”. FWIW and IMHO it’s another 30-45 minutes from there into real Appalachia. Athens Ohio (an hour from Columbus) is considered Appalachia, and it is a classic college town. Other than his grandmother (probably redneck), the family he describes as his own is white trash. That he escaped being white trash is something for which he should be commended. My wife Katie grew up redneck; but easily a 1/4th of her extended family are White Trash. Several of her other extended family went to college and have good jobs. It makes for interesting reunions. I’d say it takes 3 generations to wash redneck out of ya!
So why did they call it Hillbilly Elegy? Likely because it sounded better than White Trash Elegy. That or they knew their audience wouldn't know the difference.
That is quite an erudite exposition on Hillbillies, Rednecks and White Trash. Not sure if its erudite-ness came from book-learnin' or personal experience or perhaps a combination, but the descriptions and distinctions among the three are pretty spot on, I believe. "Isolated Redneck" is one of the most concise and evocative definitions of a Hillbilly I've run across.
My own knowledge on this subject comes strictly from personal experience, not book learnin', said experience leading to my reaction after reading Vance's book not long after it had been published and the Media had anointed him as its latest Darling and pronounced him the 'Hillbilly Whisperer'. Said reaction being a huge yawn and, "Well, hell. There's a chunk of dough and a goodly dollop of time that I'll never get back. Nothing new to see here, folks. Nothing to see here... Move along."
I wondered what all the fuss was about, but then realized they call it 'Flyover Country" for a reason, and that no one - particularly the Media - had paid any real attention to Appalachia since LBJ's War on Poverty in the 60s and the UMW coal strikes of the 70s. Loretta Lynn's 'Coal Miner's Daughter' did strike a national chord for a hot minute in 1970, but 'The Pill' struck a much, much louder one in '75, and after the 2nd (and much longer) coal strike of the decade in '77 and '78, Appalachia and its denizens were pretty much ignored. Until the Media got wind that Hillbillies (now, for all practical purposes, an exotic and newly discovered species) and Rednecks and White Trash (whom a lot more people recognized as native a American species) had started dying in quantity from Vicodin, Lortab and OxyContin, a quantity nearly twice the national rate, in fact. So...
Now *there* was a story, by gobs.
But I need to back up here for a moment. Why did I choose to read Vance's elegy for himself anyway? Oh, wait. I guess it was a memoir? Anyway, I was born and raised on the edge of a small rural county seat town in central Kentucky, it being on the edge of the Knobs region of the state, surrounded on nearly three sides by Knobs.
Knobs? If unfamiliar, think Appalachians at about 1/4 to 1/3 scale with very steep slopes and deep creek bottoms containing narrow, winding "squirrel-paths" for roads - when and where there *are* roads rather than squirrel paths and other sundry trails - minus the coal mines. And with actual 'flat land' in large contiguous quantities as a rather scarce commodity. What land isn't 'Knobs' is mostly 'rolling'. Heck, even the main river in the area is rolling, that being the Rolling Fork River.
The isolation these environs foster among the mainly Redneck residents thereof isn't quite as severe as in the big-boy, all-grown-up eastern mountains, but it's a *thing* for many of them all the same. As was the long-standing lack of economic opportunity in a rural, mostly agricultural county with few manufacturing or business jobs, though that situation has changed very much for the better over the past half century since I left home. (Unlike Appalachia, the relative un-isolated nature of the geography of the non-Knob part of the area has helped with that tremendously, making my hometown, at least, quite accessible to manufacturing interests. And they've accessed it to the benefit of all.)
So, while not 'technically' Hillbillies, those Rednecks and the occasional White Trash back in the Knobs are the next best thing. At least 1st cousins, and maybe even a bit closer, with many of the same customs, behaviors and attitudes as their eastern brethren. If you were to throw in a coal mine here and there and infect a number of them with Black Lung disease, well the difference would be less than negligible, I suspect.
So, having grown up going to school, working on farms and otherwise interacting with a good number of local 'Hillbillies' both young and old, and having seen where and how they lived and experiencing their sometimes clannish and distrustful / suspicious behavior firsthand, I felt almost duty bound to read Vance's book. I knew from experience that horse whisperers were a thing, but Hillbilly Whisperers?
As it turned out, a figment of the Media's imagination and proof of its naivete and gullibility when played by a con man whose con they're unfamiliar with.
Oh, wait. I was writing about J.D. Vance, not Donald J. Trump, wasn't I? Or was I?
Erstwhile Appalachian Hillbilly Hoaxer or Concrete Jungle Crook. Same diff in the case of these two by my lights.
Edit: There was one other reaction I had after reading Vance's book before I let it slip into the oblivion of "it's in a stack or pile or box of books around here somewhere, but damned if I know where and damned if I care." What was it?
"That boy's gonna' end up in politics." Seriously. I kid you not.
So, now who's the Hillbilly Whisperer? (Sound of Day's Work t'bakker juice hitting spittoon dead center.)
Mine came from personal observation. I got called a redneck growing up because I was in scouting (apparently no one in a city ever joined boy scouts).
After I posted this I saw a tweet about someone claiming JD Vance is not a hillbilly, like they are. And they grew up in a Texas city! They thought the terms were interchangeable. Sort of like thinking since hex, phillips, and flatheads are all screwdrivers, they are all the same....They are not.
And some rednecks do get a college degree (I'm an exhibit of that).
I'm neither a redneck nor a hillbilly. I'd say I'm more or less redneck adjacent and hillbilly familiar because of the circumstances of my upbringing I wrote about above. My Southern-Lite roots were and are a big part of who I am, I suppose. But more than anything else my identity is attached to being blue-collar working class. More middle class financially because of the money I managed to earn as a skilled tradesman over the years working tons of overtime and for many years two jobs, but when you're punching a time clock owned by someone else, it doesn't matter if you make minimum wage or $40 / hour or even more... you're in the working class as far as my experience has shown me.
When I moved to Michigan after high school, I took a lot of ribbing because of my accent. And when some people found out where I was from and realized I was Italian, they thought themselves pretty clever combining hillbilly and dago to call me a hillaaago. Too clever by about half. :-)
In my former professional life, I was involved in defining the target audience for a brand of bourbon, using parameters of available research but also amplifying them with a description. I decided that the guy we're aiming at with this brand--not the category leader but a recognized old name that has genuine quality but not snob appeal--is a self-made success, though he isn't professional-managerial and probably doesn't have a college degree. He is not a big-city or coastal guy, but from the heartland. He tracks with your "redneck" group. I wrote: "Think of this guy as the plumbing-supply king of Omaha."
You were onto to something with that. I could follow it.
I had some advertising classes in my undergrad days, and I loved the idea of defining the target audience. I really got into that. I just didn't enjoy advertising enough to pursue it as a career (that and I'm not good at it).
Most of my ad career was in ad agency media departments: Research, planning, execution--that's the side that you can't do with smoke and mirrors. You're dealing with lots of someone else's money, so you have to be serious and conscientious to be able to sell your plan to the client, and then make it happen without blowing any deadlines due to team members who don't hold up their end. I worked mostly with print media, and for a lot of business-to-business clients. It wasn't super-glamorous, but I felt like I was making a contribution to some good companies, and I had the trust of my bosses, which is really important.
It’s just my daughter and her almost 4 month old with me at the lake right now. It’s heavenly after last week when there were 11 of us here. Babies are a lot of work. How easily one forgets or maybe it’s because I’m not 30 years old anymore!
Good morning. Cloudy and not as hot today. It rained yesterday and will rain this PM.
The mothership is covering the investigation into the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. But right now, as Cynthia put it over there, “Zot knows.”
As I recall, the company that bought up the name and the husk of AT&T was not the cellphone company Cingular, but the “Baby Bell” SBC.
I think you’re right—there was an intermediate stage before Cingular bought them and got rid of the hated Cingular brand. I can remember when Verizon was a Baby Bell named “Ameritech”, too. When they changed their name to Verizon they had decided they wanted to shed all their copper line networks. All that copper expensively strung across the continent into every home had become a costly expense in terms of maintenance and repair.
I found (and still find) dealing with Ma Bell and those Baby Bells and their descendants (Frontier is the juvenile delinquent in my neighborhood) every bit as annoying as was hearing this song played ad nauseam, ad infinitum back in the heyday of the Bells...
I have two days off from camp, during which I'll do housecleaning and errands and have two Zoom meetings tonight and two live meetings tomorrow, because this is the life I've chosen. D and F will come home some time today: under-18 staff are required to be off camp over night, and D, who is 20, will be glad to be in his bed instead of a tent, as well.
It rained here last night, but I don't know whether it rained at camp, which is about 15 miles away.
We got some rain early evening that lasted for a while. It was close to ideal. Supposed to get more today. The grass seed I’ve been watering should be able to make due on its own for a couple days.
D and F are home for 22 hours with much, very smelly laundry. I'll have it all done by noon tomorrow.
Let them steep.
I pay for my keep by getting all the laundry done.
Happy Wednesday.
I cleaned around the stove yesterday, spurred by the odor of gas. No leak. It turns out people doing laundry late at night consumes more gas, as the clothes line doesn't work then. The propane supplier's sales records had yet to capture the change in usage.
Good morning. For the third day in a row, there is a "lake" in the street in front of my building.
Yesterday's newspaper was delivered along with today's, as promised, though they are still having production issues--meaning that the pages were kind of scrambled up, with certain features placed in sections where they don't normally appear. But apparently the Tribune was not the only paper affected, because their printing plant also handles the Sun-Times, Daily Herald, WSJ, and NYT for this area. The S-T has an article today (I read it online) that mentions how there are readers (like me) who strongly prefer print over electronic versions, for actual reasons not related to fogeyness (if that' s not a word, it should be). Apparently many people notice (and are often put out) when they can't get their paper paper--for which they pay significant $$--and now the experts are noticing that we notice. Who knew? Stop the presses!
Stop the presses!?? Well do you want the darned paper or not?
You know that was said with tongue firmly in cheek, right?
Of course. But if you'd get your tounge outta' there I might be able to hear ya' better.
🦻👅
Sorry. Couldn't help myself. Don't even try to anymore, since there's no help for what's wrong with me anyway.
Don't forget, badinage is our lifeblood here.
🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
I hope that represents donated blood, not blood spilled.
There's something about being able to pass the comics page around the table. Referring to an online comic doesn't cut it. The moment and the connection are lost.
Reading the paper is a communal activity. It models to kids the uses and importance of reading - and that reading is a defensible form of procrastination.
When I'm done with the paper, if I'm working at the store that day, I'll leave it in the break room. Sometimes other people take a look at it. At least they know that there is such a thing as a newspaper.
And--I've got to give credit to the editors for trying to cultivate a younger and of-color audience rather than reproach them for being PC--there are prominent stories and photos about people and subjects they can relate to. The sports section does a lot of that work, but so does the front page.
I wrote this yesterday while reading a bit about JD Vance, and the complaints about his background. I may post it on the mothership.
Okay, time for some education. People are ripping on JD Vance, claiming he isn’t a hillbilly. Technically he was born in Appalachia, where most working class are Hillbillies, the remainder mostly White Trash. I reckon too many of you conflate, Redneck, Hillbilly, and White Trash, so let’s define them, so you understand the difference.
Redneck is rural/small town (sometimes suburban) working class, sometimes middle class. A plumber or electrician, or an HVAC person who starts his own company (and is successful) are likely redneck and middle class. Geographically, not New England nor Ecotopia. Variants are similar across Southern, Midwest, Plains, and Rockies.
A redneck typically did something after high school to better themselves; joining the military, apprenticeship, technical college or certificate, etc. They tend to be responsible, especially once they become parents. They may drink, but don’t drink and drive. They tend to like sports, and are active in their community, coaching, boosters, chaperones for school, etc. They dislike being looked down on, and see things a bit more clearly that others realize. They know a union job might be more likely to have layoffs, so those added benefits might disappear. They understand raising minimum results in fewer jobs for their kids. They want a safe work environment, but one where reasonable risk is acceptable. They wear hard hats for crying out loud! They were not problem students in high school, but in the past many of them had learning disabilities (My father was likely dyslexic). They enjoy sports, they made many friends in high school, but they don’t push themselves hard on their studies. They didn’t see a benefit to doing so. But at the same time they aspire for their children to do better than did they. They are not ashamed of themselves, but they have hopes for the future. In many ways Amish are rednecks. Is redneck or ‘neck an insult? Not among rednecks, but elitists earn an FU if they call someone that. It’s funny; people who know me accept me calling others a ‘neck, but if they don’t know me, they get angry if I do. I’m seen as a “redneck who done good”.
A Hillbilly is an isolated redneck. They are very clan oriented, protective of their families, and mistrust outsiders. So much so they avoid jobs/careers that take them too far away from their families. I had a white trash student at Kentucky. She drove an hour to class each day, because she refused to move closer to campus. Her goal was to become an Assistant Manager at an Arbys, at the interstate exit near where she lived. They tend to be a little lower SES from rednecks, but they still take pride in who they are. They are often geographically isolated. But they still are good folks.
White Trash are losers. Not down on their luck types. Not a redneck who got addicted to pain meds after an accident; people actually understand that one. White Trash don’t have ambition, are short sighted, living paycheck to paycheck. They rarely have any post high school training. They want cushy jobs, like many federal jobs. But they are the type to use all their sick leave as soon as they accrue it. Ten years later, instead of having 130 days accrued, they have 1. White Trash do not take care of themselves or their families. They are most likely to have kids out of wedlock and be proud of it. They feel entitled to government assistance. When you visualize the worst “Wal-Mart” shoppers, you’re visualizing White Trash. White trash can have roots in either redneck or hillbilly.
Rednecks and Hillbillies can get along, often respect each other, but also respect each other’s differences. A redneck isn’t gonna hit on a hillbilly’s daughter, knowing the father might shotgun him for doing so. But if he is a plumber, he’ll fix a hillbilly’s bathroom without any issue. If they attend the same school they run in different crowds, but they are civil to each other. But both look down on White Trash. Both don’t want their kids associating with White Trash. Both get offended being called White Trash, or having an elitist mistake them for White Trash.
Years ago I volunteered at Quaker Haven Camp for a cleanup day. I came dressed in grubbies, ready to get muddy. I enjoy that. A volunteer who didn’t know me thought I was White Trash. Imagine her embarrassment when “Dr Janney” was asked to give the lunch meal blessing, and a short talk afterwards.
I doubt JD Vance is really a Hillbilly. He was born in Appalachia (Jackson, Kentucky), so that likely qualifies him as a Hillbilly, technically. Middletown is full of rednecks and white trash, but is a good 30 minute drive from the “Appalachian border”. FWIW and IMHO it’s another 30-45 minutes from there into real Appalachia. Athens Ohio (an hour from Columbus) is considered Appalachia, and it is a classic college town. Other than his grandmother (probably redneck), the family he describes as his own is white trash. That he escaped being white trash is something for which he should be commended. My wife Katie grew up redneck; but easily a 1/4th of her extended family are White Trash. Several of her other extended family went to college and have good jobs. It makes for interesting reunions. I’d say it takes 3 generations to wash redneck out of ya!
So why did they call it Hillbilly Elegy? Likely because it sounded better than White Trash Elegy. That or they knew their audience wouldn't know the difference.
That is quite an erudite exposition on Hillbillies, Rednecks and White Trash. Not sure if its erudite-ness came from book-learnin' or personal experience or perhaps a combination, but the descriptions and distinctions among the three are pretty spot on, I believe. "Isolated Redneck" is one of the most concise and evocative definitions of a Hillbilly I've run across.
My own knowledge on this subject comes strictly from personal experience, not book learnin', said experience leading to my reaction after reading Vance's book not long after it had been published and the Media had anointed him as its latest Darling and pronounced him the 'Hillbilly Whisperer'. Said reaction being a huge yawn and, "Well, hell. There's a chunk of dough and a goodly dollop of time that I'll never get back. Nothing new to see here, folks. Nothing to see here... Move along."
I wondered what all the fuss was about, but then realized they call it 'Flyover Country" for a reason, and that no one - particularly the Media - had paid any real attention to Appalachia since LBJ's War on Poverty in the 60s and the UMW coal strikes of the 70s. Loretta Lynn's 'Coal Miner's Daughter' did strike a national chord for a hot minute in 1970, but 'The Pill' struck a much, much louder one in '75, and after the 2nd (and much longer) coal strike of the decade in '77 and '78, Appalachia and its denizens were pretty much ignored. Until the Media got wind that Hillbillies (now, for all practical purposes, an exotic and newly discovered species) and Rednecks and White Trash (whom a lot more people recognized as native a American species) had started dying in quantity from Vicodin, Lortab and OxyContin, a quantity nearly twice the national rate, in fact. So...
Now *there* was a story, by gobs.
But I need to back up here for a moment. Why did I choose to read Vance's elegy for himself anyway? Oh, wait. I guess it was a memoir? Anyway, I was born and raised on the edge of a small rural county seat town in central Kentucky, it being on the edge of the Knobs region of the state, surrounded on nearly three sides by Knobs.
Knobs? If unfamiliar, think Appalachians at about 1/4 to 1/3 scale with very steep slopes and deep creek bottoms containing narrow, winding "squirrel-paths" for roads - when and where there *are* roads rather than squirrel paths and other sundry trails - minus the coal mines. And with actual 'flat land' in large contiguous quantities as a rather scarce commodity. What land isn't 'Knobs' is mostly 'rolling'. Heck, even the main river in the area is rolling, that being the Rolling Fork River.
The isolation these environs foster among the mainly Redneck residents thereof isn't quite as severe as in the big-boy, all-grown-up eastern mountains, but it's a *thing* for many of them all the same. As was the long-standing lack of economic opportunity in a rural, mostly agricultural county with few manufacturing or business jobs, though that situation has changed very much for the better over the past half century since I left home. (Unlike Appalachia, the relative un-isolated nature of the geography of the non-Knob part of the area has helped with that tremendously, making my hometown, at least, quite accessible to manufacturing interests. And they've accessed it to the benefit of all.)
So, while not 'technically' Hillbillies, those Rednecks and the occasional White Trash back in the Knobs are the next best thing. At least 1st cousins, and maybe even a bit closer, with many of the same customs, behaviors and attitudes as their eastern brethren. If you were to throw in a coal mine here and there and infect a number of them with Black Lung disease, well the difference would be less than negligible, I suspect.
So, having grown up going to school, working on farms and otherwise interacting with a good number of local 'Hillbillies' both young and old, and having seen where and how they lived and experiencing their sometimes clannish and distrustful / suspicious behavior firsthand, I felt almost duty bound to read Vance's book. I knew from experience that horse whisperers were a thing, but Hillbilly Whisperers?
As it turned out, a figment of the Media's imagination and proof of its naivete and gullibility when played by a con man whose con they're unfamiliar with.
Oh, wait. I was writing about J.D. Vance, not Donald J. Trump, wasn't I? Or was I?
Erstwhile Appalachian Hillbilly Hoaxer or Concrete Jungle Crook. Same diff in the case of these two by my lights.
Edit: There was one other reaction I had after reading Vance's book before I let it slip into the oblivion of "it's in a stack or pile or box of books around here somewhere, but damned if I know where and damned if I care." What was it?
"That boy's gonna' end up in politics." Seriously. I kid you not.
So, now who's the Hillbilly Whisperer? (Sound of Day's Work t'bakker juice hitting spittoon dead center.)
Mine came from personal observation. I got called a redneck growing up because I was in scouting (apparently no one in a city ever joined boy scouts).
After I posted this I saw a tweet about someone claiming JD Vance is not a hillbilly, like they are. And they grew up in a Texas city! They thought the terms were interchangeable. Sort of like thinking since hex, phillips, and flatheads are all screwdrivers, they are all the same....They are not.
And some rednecks do get a college degree (I'm an exhibit of that).
I'm neither a redneck nor a hillbilly. I'd say I'm more or less redneck adjacent and hillbilly familiar because of the circumstances of my upbringing I wrote about above. My Southern-Lite roots were and are a big part of who I am, I suppose. But more than anything else my identity is attached to being blue-collar working class. More middle class financially because of the money I managed to earn as a skilled tradesman over the years working tons of overtime and for many years two jobs, but when you're punching a time clock owned by someone else, it doesn't matter if you make minimum wage or $40 / hour or even more... you're in the working class as far as my experience has shown me.
When I moved to Michigan after high school, I took a lot of ribbing because of my accent. And when some people found out where I was from and realized I was Italian, they thought themselves pretty clever combining hillbilly and dago to call me a hillaaago. Too clever by about half. :-)
Very informative, Jay. I find your analysis of Mr. Vance pretty persuasive.
Very interesting and helpful definitions.
In my former professional life, I was involved in defining the target audience for a brand of bourbon, using parameters of available research but also amplifying them with a description. I decided that the guy we're aiming at with this brand--not the category leader but a recognized old name that has genuine quality but not snob appeal--is a self-made success, though he isn't professional-managerial and probably doesn't have a college degree. He is not a big-city or coastal guy, but from the heartland. He tracks with your "redneck" group. I wrote: "Think of this guy as the plumbing-supply king of Omaha."
You were onto to something with that. I could follow it.
I had some advertising classes in my undergrad days, and I loved the idea of defining the target audience. I really got into that. I just didn't enjoy advertising enough to pursue it as a career (that and I'm not good at it).
Most of my ad career was in ad agency media departments: Research, planning, execution--that's the side that you can't do with smoke and mirrors. You're dealing with lots of someone else's money, so you have to be serious and conscientious to be able to sell your plan to the client, and then make it happen without blowing any deadlines due to team members who don't hold up their end. I worked mostly with print media, and for a lot of business-to-business clients. It wasn't super-glamorous, but I felt like I was making a contribution to some good companies, and I had the trust of my bosses, which is really important.
It’s just my daughter and her almost 4 month old with me at the lake right now. It’s heavenly after last week when there were 11 of us here. Babies are a lot of work. How easily one forgets or maybe it’s because I’m not 30 years old anymore!
That sounds wonderful! Enjoy your day!
Sounds like you’re getting the right refresher course—with valuable assistance!
Good morning. Cloudy and not as hot today. It rained yesterday and will rain this PM.
The mothership is covering the investigation into the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. But right now, as Cynthia put it over there, “Zot knows.”
As I recall, the company that bought up the name and the husk of AT&T was not the cellphone company Cingular, but the “Baby Bell” SBC.
I think you’re right—there was an intermediate stage before Cingular bought them and got rid of the hated Cingular brand. I can remember when Verizon was a Baby Bell named “Ameritech”, too. When they changed their name to Verizon they had decided they wanted to shed all their copper line networks. All that copper expensively strung across the continent into every home had become a costly expense in terms of maintenance and repair.
I found (and still find) dealing with Ma Bell and those Baby Bells and their descendants (Frontier is the juvenile delinquent in my neighborhood) every bit as annoying as was hearing this song played ad nauseam, ad infinitum back in the heyday of the Bells...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaBLlkqx7eU
Good morning. That's very interesting.
I have two days off from camp, during which I'll do housecleaning and errands and have two Zoom meetings tonight and two live meetings tomorrow, because this is the life I've chosen. D and F will come home some time today: under-18 staff are required to be off camp over night, and D, who is 20, will be glad to be in his bed instead of a tent, as well.
It rained here last night, but I don't know whether it rained at camp, which is about 15 miles away.
Morning.
We got some rain early evening that lasted for a while. It was close to ideal. Supposed to get more today. The grass seed I’ve been watering should be able to make due on its own for a couple days.
So, I never realized dew was *made* by grass or its seed.
In lieu of doing the Dew…
Good luck with the grass!