The Voices In My Head: Life in the Trailer Park

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RAMBLIN'S OF BILLY JOE BOB "BUDDY" HALSEY

Reclaimin' Cracker

Billy Joe Bob "Buddy" Halsey

Couple weeks ago I found myself at home all by my lonesome. My kids, Darlene and Bucky, was at my mama-in-law's house for the night. My huntin' dogs, Beau and Blue, were sleepin' under the trailer. I had Darlene's cat, Pookie Bug (don't laugh, she named it when she was five), locked under the sink so it wouldn't bother me. And my lovely wife, Bootsie, was out bowling with her girlfriends from the chicken plant. I had the place all to myself and I was in hog heaven. It's not that I don't love my family and my dogs (I do hate that damn cat). It's just that I don't get much time alone. Heck fire, I can't even go to the bathroom to read the TV Guide without one of the kids beating on the door. They have no idea how that can affect a man's bowels. It's kind of like being rear-ended in traffic.

Anyhow, I got to watchin' an old movie on that Turner Channel that had Jim Brown (the football player, not the singer) and George Kennedy (the actor, not the president) in it. It was about Brown being elected the first black sheriff in a little southern town in the '60s. Naturally every white man in town was portrayed as a redneck peckerwood except for Kennedy. He was kind of a peckerwood-lite, so he ended up on Big Jim's side. I think there was supposed to be some kind of "why can't we all just get along" kind of message in there somewhere, but I didn't really get it.

Anyways, there's this one scene where this redneck and this black fellow are put in a jail cell together. The peckerwood makes some smart-alecky comment and the black fellow says, "Watch it, you cracker."

That caught my ear. Cracker? What the sam hill is a cracker? I was called a honky once, but that was by a white guy at work who heard it on Sanford and Son. Since he was obviously under the influence of television, I didn't take it too personal. But a cracker? Maybe I been cooped up in the trailer park too long, but I don't think anybody's ever called me a cracker.

Therefore, right here in print so everybody'll know it, I'm officially reclaiming the word "cracker" for the common man. Feel free to use it for yourself and adapt it to your needs.

The whole cracker issue got me to thinkin'. Why is it that every time somebody in a movie is supposed to be from the south they come off lookin' like a total idiot? Hell, I know a bunch of people from up north that are a whole lot stupider than we are. Course, they are my relatives, but I'm pretty sure the same applies to everybody up north.

Take my cousin Jimmy for example. Jimmy's from Detroit and he was down for a visit a couple weeks ago and he thought my southern accent was real funny. He kept calling me and Bootsie "Youse guys," but he laughed at me when I said, "Y'all." He asked, "How's your mom and dad," but thought I was a moron cause I asked him, "How's ya momma'n'em?"

Needless to say, Jimmy didn't score no points with me. I reckon he was still upset about that time when we were twelve and I held him down and made him eat a dried cow pie (I shooed the flys away first, so what's the big deal). I guess some people just can't let bygones be bygones. Jimmy's visit was real educational for me, though. I learned that them northerners sure do talk funny.

Jimmy said that up north, "fixing" means that you're repairing something. I explained that down here, fixin' means that you're about to do something big, as in, "I'm fixin' to go to the store." He said that up north that would mean, "I'm repairing to go to the store." Then he called me a country hick and asked if I had a pop.

"A what?" I asked.

Jimmy claimed that up north a soft drink is called a pop. A pop? Down here a pop is what you got on the seat of your pants if you didn't do something your daddy told you to do. That's when he called me a Bubba.

What Jimmy couldn't understand was that in the south, a soft drink is called a Coke. It don't matter what kind it is. That's why I get peeved everytime I go into McDonald's and order a coke and they ask if Pepsi is alright. Course it's alright. A Pepsi's a coke, ain't it?

Another thang Jimmy laughed at me for was because I kept saying the word "yonder."

"What the hell's a yonder?" he asked.

"Yonder," I explained, "it means over there, somewhere."

That's when he called me an illiterate redneck. I wasn't sure what that meant, but just to be on the safe side I gave him a pop in his, well, you know, down yonder.

Boy, that cow pie must've sent some kind of deadly chemical to Jimmy's brain because that boy is dumber than dirt. If he took an IQ test he'd have to copy off somebody else. The only difference between him and a pig is that a pig has a personality. If Jimmy went up to the Wizard of Oz, the Wizard would tell him he didn't take on hopeless cases.

Oh well, so much for promoting brotherly love. Sorry Jim and George. Then again, if'n they ever met my cousin Jimmy they'd hate him, too.

That Jimmy. He's always been such a cracker.