by Annie Smith
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Why We Wrote This Book
All about Conceiving Your Child
Hauling Your Newborn Home
Recording the Birth
Fixing Up the Nursery
Breast-Feeding Directions
Bottle Feeding
Weaning the Baby
Changing Rug Rats’ Diapers
Choosing a Baby-sitter
Redneck Nannies
“Whut Air Ya Gonna Name the Kid?”
Middle Names
Hollywood in the Backwoods
The Significance of Bubba
Dolls’ Real Purpose
Dating outside the Family
Explaining Eviction to Your Kids
Farting: Will You Go to Hell?
Passing Gas for Fun and Profit
Grime and Punishment
When Grandpa’s in Prison
Just Say “Hell, No!” to Drugs
Stranger in a Strange Land
Surefire Cussin’ Remedies
Huntin’ and Fishin’
When Nature Calls Collect
Guns and Gun Racks
In-laws and Other Household Pests
Debugging Your Home
Junkyards as Vacation Sites
Other Family Outings
Keeping Your Kids Safe
Lip-Smackin’ Snacks for Kids
The Real Dirt on Eatin’ Right
This Is Your Brain on Fried Eggs
Outside Dinin’
Moonshine and Other Medications
Home First Aid for Kids
Stuttering
Nine Greatest Redneck Tragedies
Outhouse Dos and Don’ts
Entertaining in the Outhouse
Putting the X Back in Christmas
The Redneck Stock Portfolio
Hardheaded Hillbillies in a Software World
Quaint Redneck Superstitions
Elvis: Dead or Alive?
Bedtime Stories and Lullabies
Redneck Toys
All Their Rowdy Friends
Sixteen Uses for an Old Commode
A Boy’s First Truck
A Boy’s First DUI
School Days, Rule Days
The Birds, the Bees, and the Backseat
Sex, Lies, and Duck Tape
Twins: Should You Keep Just One?
Use and Care of Snot Rags
Vaseline’s Role in Rearin’
Sideburns for Young’uns under Ten
More Grooming Tips
The Little Redneck Instruction Book
Weighing Kids on Store Scales
Child Rearing for Peanuts
The Britches of Mayhew County
Night of the Living T-shirt
Buying Brand-New Duds
Manners
Courtesy
X Marks the Pot
Redneck Home Furnishings
Young’uns Gotta Work
The Man with the Goal ’n’ Gun
Callus Behavior
Picking the Right Job
Shorty’s Rise to Riches
Dumb and Dumber
Zero Tolerance for Misbehavin’
Passing Out Chores
Passing Out in Front of the Kids
The Boogeyman: Parents’ Best Friend
The Haunted Pillow Caper
Give ’Em That Old-Time Religion
Picking the Right Church
Give Us This Day Our Daily Cornbread
Skinny-dipping during Baptism
Speaking in Unknown Tongues
Say Hello to Hell
Honky-tonk Survival Skills
Entering the Outside World
How to Act like a Redneck
Beer: It’s Not Just for Breakfast Anymore
How to Beat Procrastination
Copyright
Why We Wrote This Book
We’ve raised ten kids and not a single one of ’em has gone to prison. So we reckon that makes us qualified to tell other people how to bring up their young’uns.
Our five grown boys all hold down good jobs making over six dollars an hour. Our three married daughters also work outside the home, hanging clothes on the line and mowing the yard. The two youngest kids, Lonnie and Betty Jean, still live with us. They’re more rambunctious than their older brothers and sisters, but we blame that on the TV. No matter—we expect them to turn out well or else we’ll tan their hides.
Now, we don’t claim to be some highfalutin experts on child rearing like that baby-care fellow Mr. Spock. We’re just raising our young’uns like our own parents brought us up, and we’re passing along these time-tested methods to you.
Most redneck boys and girls are polite, law-abiding kids who make their parents proud. The worst four-letter words they use are “shucks” and “dadburn.” And it ain’t no accident that they turned out decent.
It’s because they got raised the right way—the redneck way.
That’s our way, and it works. We know because we’re parents, and neither one of us has ended up in the crazy house yet.
Annie and Glen-Bob Smith
Rural Route 8
Chicken Neck, Tennessee
555–2218 (Our neighbor’s phone—ask him to holler for us.)
All about Conceiving Your Child
If you don’t know how to do this, you ain’t ready to care for the result.
Hauling Your Newborn Home
Steal a blanket from the hospital—heck, they’re gonna overcharge you anyway—and wrap it around your baby so he’ll keep warm during the ride home.
This is especially important if it’s wintertime and your pickup truck’s heater is broke. You might be used to flicking icicles off your chin on the way to work, but the baby just came from a nice warm belly and will squall all the way home if he’s cold.
If the blanket has the hospital’s name on it, so much the better. In some Southern neighborhoods that’s like having designer label bedsheets. Rednecks love “name brand” furnishings in their homes—that’s why they hang Budweiser mirrors on their den walls and permanently borrow Budget Inn ashtrays.
In fact, when you take that blanket, see if you also can pocket a saucer with the hospital’s name on it. Put it beside the baby’s bed so he can use it for an ashtray when he starts sneaking smokes six or seven years down the road.
Once the kid was outgrowed the blanket, put it away. Give it back when he gets old enough to drive. It’ll be a fond reminder of his childhood.
He can also tear it in two and use half as a gas cap and the other half as a snot rag.
Recording the Birth
Unlike certain beers, kids don’t come with a “Born On” date. So as soon as you get home from the hospital, write down your baby’s birthday in the family Bible. That way you won’t forget it—which is easy to do if you’ve got a houseful of young’uns.
There ain’t nothing more embarrassing than showing off your latest child to a neighbor and having to say, “This is our daughter Sally. She was born last year, some’ers between the time the dog died and the roof fell in.”
Fixing Up the Nursery
Clear a space out in the backyard. Be sure to pick up all the busted beer bottles, shotgun shell casings, and any other trash your kids might get cut or choked on.
But don’t move all
of the old commodes. Leave the cleanest, least cracked one in the nursery area. Toilet training’s a messy job, so make the kids learn it for themselves.
Next, put up four posts and string some chicken wire around the nursery. Make sure the fence ain’t got no holes in it. You don’t want your babies crawling around the neighborhood—a dirty-faced kid looks very much like a raccoon and some fool might take a potshot at it.
When it rains, don’t bother bringing your young’uns inside unless it’s a real frog drowner. A good drizzle on Saturday means you won’t have to bother giving the kids their weekly bath, and you’ll have time to watch all of Walker, Texas Ranger.
Meet Maw Redneck
Breast-Feeding Directions
Rednecks traditionally have big families, and redneck women traditionally have big bosoms. We’ve got women in our hometown of Chicken Neck, Tennessee, who make Dolly Parton look like she’s got two ball bearings taped to her chest.
But no matter if you’re a 44DDD, the rule is still: One Baby Per Breast!
We don’t see anything wrong with breast-feeding your babies in public. But a woman trying to fit three or four babies on two nipples looks kinda like a hog suckling piglets. It’s downright upsetting to genteel folk.
Even worse, the babies who don’t get enough milk will grow up conniving and mean. We think this is what causes lawyers and politicians.
Bottle Feeding
A few unlucky women, God bless ’em, have breasts the size of acorns. Or even if they do have decent-sized bosoms, they don’t have much milk. In these cases it’s okay for them to raise their kids on baby formula.
But you have to buy the right formula. For instance, Formula 409 won’t do—although it’ll sure give your young’uns the cleanest innards around.
Shorty Perkins, who owns one-eighth interest in the local filling station, accidentally bought his kid some Formula One racing fuel additive. It tasted terrible, but for a while there his little boy Scooter was the fastest kid in Mayhew County.
Weaning the Baby
Sooner or later, mothers have to uncouple their young’uns from their bosom.
If the kid keeps hanging on until it weighs upwards of fifty pounds, Mama’s stretched breasts are going to take aim directly at her feet the rest of her life.
If you reach that point, even the Wonderbra saleswoman can’t help. She’ll just throw up her hands and send you to a body shop that custom-makes bras with steel-belted radial supports.
So get that young’un’s mouth off your bosom as soon as you can. If he won’t let go, run down to the volunteer fire department and have them pry him loose with the Jaws of Life. The next step is to put something else into your child’s hungry little mouth.
Jars of baby food work fine. Mashed peas, pinto beans, and okra are popular in the redneck world. Finely ground hog jowls also will do, but they might upset a baby’s delicate stomach.
We’ve found that most babies love cold milk with hot cornbread crumbled up in it—which is easy to eat when you ain’t got all your teeth.
Maybe that’s why rednecks of all ages love cornbread and milk.
Changing Rug Rats’ Diapers
This is a dirty, thankless chore. That’s why lots of redneck parents let their small tots run around naked from the waist down and let the chips fall where they may.
Keep your little’uns out in the nursery most of the time and eventually they’ll set aside one corner to use as an outhouse. Then you can just go out with a pooper scooper and clean up once a day. This saves on diaper costs and diapering time.
You don’t even have to buy diapers when company’s coming. Just pin a dishcloth or snot rag over your baby’s bottom and hope for the best.
Choosing a Baby-sitter
Go down to the pawn shop and pick out a good cheap VCR (the best ones have “12:00” flashing on the front). Then find a tape of Smokey and the Bandit—which is probably the best movie ever made.
You can sneak out of the house for hours while your kids are busy watching and rewatching that wonderful Burt Reynolds movie, which somehow was overlooked at Oscar time.
Last summer our neighbor Rufus McKinney put out a pile of Little Debbie cakes, turned on Smokey, and took his missus to Myrtle Beach—and their young’uns didn’t realize they were gone until three days later when a storm knocked out the power.
Some rednecks use the regular TV to baby-sit their kids, but it’s not as good as Smokey and the VCR. The quality of network TV has gone straight downhill ever since they took The Gong Show off the air.
* * *
Rednecks’ Five Favorite Videos
1. Smokey and the Bandit
2. Smokey and the Bandit II
3. Smokey and the Bandit III
4. The Alamo (John Wayne version)
5. The Beverly Hillbillies: The Movie
* * *
Redneck Nannies
In good weather, make your littlest kids play outside in the yard. Tie a nanny goat nearby and warn the young’uns that if they’re mean, the nanny will butt ’em on the butt. Tell the kids: “If your nanny says ‘bah-ah-ah-ah,’ you’d better straighten up fast—or you’ll have to stand up for the next week!”
Once the young’uns are grown, you can eat the goat and mount its head on your den wall.
“Whut Air Ya Gonna Name the Kid?”
You’ll hear this question from everybody you know as soon as word gets around town that you’ve added to your litter.
A lot of your friends will even hint for you to name your latest young’un after them, even though you’re pretty sure they’re not the father or mother.
It’s real vital to pick the right name because, as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, the wrong name will scar a boy or girl for life. Listen to Johnny Cash’s song “A Boy Named Sue” and you’ll see what we’re talking about.
We used to know a boy whose parents named him Leslie, after Leslie Howard in Gone with the Wind, and the kid spent years trying to overcome that sissy name.
When he reached his teen years, he became a rebel and tried his best to look tough and act mean.
He sent off a letter asking to join the Hell’s Angels biker gang. Only problem was, the kid kinda fit his name—he was a bit, well, prissy—and the screening committee appointed by the Hell’s Angels CEO rejected Leslie’s application “with deepest regrets.”
Leslie went ahead with his biker plans anyway, on his own. He got a mean-looking dagger tattooed on his left forearm, with a banner wrapped around it that said Born to Raise Gerbils.
He bought an old ’64 Harley-Davidson from Shorty Perkins. But Leslie had to take a door-to-door sales job to pay for the bike, and he looked kind of ridiculous roaring around town on his big hog with a little pink bumper sticker that said Ask Me about Mary Kay Cosmetics.
Leslie finally gave up fighting his name and moved to San Francisco. Last we heard, he owned a styling salon.
It broke his truck-driver daddy Sam’s heart.
Sam had always dreamed of owning a styling salon.
So if you want to avoid heartache for yourself and your kids, don’t slap a girlie-sounding name on your baby boy—or a boy-sounding name on your girl.
And shy away from giving your young’uns highfalutin names. A fancy moniker like Granville, Heathcliff, or Regan will get the kid laughed out of grade school. Even the teachers will have to stifle a snicker when they call the roll.
Besides, your kid probably won’t be able to spell his own name until he’s old enough to buy beer.
Middle Names
Many rednecks use their middle names as part of their first names—such as Roy Lee, Glen-Bob, or Sammi Jo. So pick a middle name your child will be proud to use.
Professor Harland K. Sampson has a good example of a bad middle name. For years the little perfessor told everybody the K stood for Kounty—as in Harlan County, Kentucky—but then we found out his middle name actually was Konan.
Professor Sampson’s a shy, quiet bookworm. So once the
truth came out, naturally his students nicknamed him Konan the Librarian.
Hollywood in the Backwoods
Never name your boy or girl after a movie star, unless it’s Burt, Sally, or Chuck. Star names might look wonderful and glamorous on a birth certificate, but you have to remember that the young’un will be stuck with the name for life.
Don’t you think it’s downright strange that five of today’s top movie tough guys are named Sylvester, Arnold, Steven, Bruce, and Jean-Claude? With snicker-sparking names like that, no wonder they go around shooting people!
Instead, do like most redneck parents do: Pass along the same names from generation to generation to generation, ad inflamation.
Traditional country boys’ names usually end in a y—such as Billy, Andy, Tommy, or Jimmy.
And a popular way to end girls’ names is with an e—such as Pauline, Annie, Charlene, or Aldie. But forget Goldie and Sophie.
If you want to get a little highfalutin, part the kid’s first and middle names with a hyphen.
One of our longtime family favorites is Glen-Bob. Feel free to use it as many times as you like, at no charge.
But since the name belongs to the Smith clan, make sure your boy always writes it this way: Glen-Bob®.
Some people name their kids after towns. We’ve heard of little girls called Chamonix (France), Athens (Tennessee), and Tiffany (New York). We believe this practice can get risky.
What if some parents in our town named their little girl Chicken Neck?
As we all know, Sylvester Stallone’s famous boxer, Rocky, was named after the Rocky Mountains. But most parents don’t want their kids dragging a place’s name around behind them all through life.
When Rufus McKinney’s wife birthed their last daughter, the transplanted Yankee doctor who delivered her asked: “Have you chosen an appellation?” Rufus told him he wasn’t about to name his kid after a mountain.
