ARCHIVE

Another Day in the Country

By PAT WICK

© Another Day in the Country

Redneck fever is hitting Ramona again on the 4th of July. We're busy making posters, designing redneck T-shirts and planning redneck games. It's gonna be fun — and bigger and better than ever.

This time of year always has me thinking about the redneck phenomena and the fact that we can honestly laugh about it. Most of the time, typical redneck behavior, is a pain in the tush. But here we are in Ramona celebrating it all!

I guess we fill the bill of being Redneck in Ramona if being redneck means that we use the word "ain't" with great abandon. We've got redneck cornered with old cars sitting around in a lot of yards and I need to stop trying to figure out how to turn them into yard art. For sure, we've still got our Christmas "stars" hanging on the telephone poles on Main Street — that right there qualifies us as a redneck town.

"Let's just call those stars, sparklers," I said to my sister, "and they'll go right along with the redneck theme."

If hunting in your own back yard puts you in the redneck category, we're it, with a gun at the ready to shoo off marauding squirrels, stray dogs, or wild pigs.

I used to think that rednecks were confined to the Midwest or the deep south, when I lived in California. But come to think of it there were redneck communities just over the hill from where I lived in the posh Napa Valley. Just take a winding road from the top of Howell Mountain, where my house perched in the country — a university town, a conservative Christian community — 39 curves down into Pope Valley and you were in a redneck haven.

Pope Valley is really a place, an area — not a town. There was once an old grocery store/gas station combination on the corner, at the bottom of the hill. One day in the 1960s the owner of the store just closed the doors and locked up that building like a time capsule. I was invited in there once about 10 years later and it was amazing. Posters all over the walls, obviously old labels on produce — times had changed, designs were different — but inside this place everything was the same. Far as I know, it's still there, just the same but closed away from prying eyes like some private memorial.

Take a few turns through Pope Valley and you'd come across redneck artwork. This guy named Litto lived there and he loved hubcaps. Litto started collecting hubcaps and hanging them on the fences around his property. Maybe he was waiting for the owners to come claim them, or maybe he just thought they were pretty. You've got to admit that collecting hubcaps is a rather redneck enterprise — and then hanging them all over your fences is redneck for sure. People got a kick out of seeing Litto's collection and started driving by more often just to see how his collection was growing. He even got published in a book, "Backroads of California," and Litto became a celebrity. He started adding things to the show like spray painting designs on his driveway with whatever color paint was handy or on sale. And when he ran out of hubcaps he hung up tires. Nope, this wasn't redneck in Ramona, it was redneck in California.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Kansas, we obviously have no corner on being a redneck, but we're gonna play it for all it's worth. Triple T has a tire collection and come 4th of July we are going to spread them out along downtown Ramona and play ourselves a redneck game. "That there's gonna be funny," and you're invited to be there.

My sister is dolling up her pressure sprayer to enter the Girls and Boys and their Toys Competition and I'm putting racing stripes on my zero-turn mower. Tooltime Tim's latest toy is his bucket truck, now that's a pretty big toy if you ask me and I think he's going to have to spiff it up a little and call it a redneck high-rise or advertise Neighborhood Watch.

It's going to be quite a day in the country this 4th of July. I guarantee it!

Quantcast