Hillbilly Cred

As I mentioned in a recent tweet, when I was growing up in rural Missouri, I had two friends whose parents made moonshine (they actually called it white lightning, but it was still 190 proof alcohol).

I thought about that after listening to Kenny Chesney's song, "Back Where I Come From". He hit on several things I did in my youth, but there are many more that he did not. So I started thinking about all the stuff that gives me my "hillbilly cred", stuff that seemed quite normal at the time, but seems very strange today.

Here is my (very incomplete) list:

Homestyle
I went to 1st grade in a 3-room stone schoolhouse in West Line, Missouri (Pop. 89), just up the road from Luther's, a combination liquor store, grocery, and post office. The owner, Luther Arnold, was also the mayor, the postmaster, and the schoolbus driver.

I lived for a time in a house with no indoor toilet. We had running water, but the outhouse was a necessity. I also lived in a single-wide trailer (wheels still on) that was parked in a pasture on my grandparents' farm.

We never had A/C, either at home or in a car. Window fans kept it tolerable in the house, and the infamous "4-60" cooling method was used in the car (4 windows down at 60 mph).

I got my first rifle, a single-shot .22, when I was 8 years old. I once accidently fired that rifle in the house while cleaning it. My grandparents never figured out how that hole got in the TV cabinet :)

The one phrase we all dreaded hearing: "Cows are out". This usually happened at night and was the "all hands on deck" signal.

Recreation
Coonhunting. This took place in the winter, from about 10pm to 2am. In the cold and the dark, we'd follow the sounds of our dogs over plowed fields, across creeks, and through underbrush. The raccoons we brought back were skinned and the hides sold for around $25 each.

Seine fishing. The seine net had a 4-ft pole on each end, weights on the bottom of the net, and floats on the top. There would be a kid holding each pole on opposite banks of the creek. We'd walk upstream, dragging the net through the water. Since it would frequently snag on rocks, etc., I would often be the 'snag boy' who had to wade out and unsnag the net.

Camping. From about age 9 or 10, I would often trudge off to the woods in the 'back 40', alone, with a hatchet, cane pole, and rifle. I'd build a little lean-to, get some firewood, and either do a little fishing or hunting for my dinner. If that failed, I'd cook up some crawdads I grabbed from the creek. I wasn't a survivalist by any means, but I could get along for several days with minimal supplies.

Diet
Some of the things I've eaten can't even be found in a Fiesta grocery store in Houston:
Rabbit, squirrel, possum, raccoon, and bullfrog
Gooseberries, wild mushrooms, wild greens (various)
Calf brains, goat, beef tongue (nothing better than a tongue sandwich!)
I'll stop now... I'm getting hungry.

We also had our local legends. A black panther and a Mo-Mo (Missouri Monster, our own Bigfoot) were both rumored to live back up in the Amarugia Hills (we called the hills "the Amaroogies"). I actually heard the panther scream, although it may have been a bobcat or screech owl.

No banjos or canoe trips that I remember, but plenty of hillbilly cred, just the same.

Oh, and that's me at age 6 in the lower right corner of the photo above.

Time to go tie up the coondogs,

Big S Ranch