A northerner's view of the south.

[Rain Mcloud]

47. I live in Oklahoma

until recently Norman,the home of the University of Oklahoma,the most liberal county in the state.
In 1993 it was tough to get a job,luckily my uncle in Montana was considering buying a semi-tractor and driving over the road.
He was hauling red cedar out of Canada on the back of a flatbed 3-ton he had bought at auction.
So i went to MT to help him.
The town was extremely depressed,the forestry had taken a huge hit by Reagan and so nearly all of the 3800+souls there were on foodstamps.
The locals had a pretty good barter system in place where foodstamps were exchanged for bullets and beer with the staple diet being in this order;beer,venison,elk,fish and potatoes and in season berries and apples or whatever they could grub.
The majority of people in town lived in pickup campers at the town dump by the river.

At the time this was the most conservative place that i had ever seen and they did not appreciate me laying the blame for their misfortune at reagan's feet.
It was always someone else's fault(usually minorities)but never their own and never the fault of republicans.
Then i started working in Canada,which in most ways was no different than what was going on in my new home.
I had started a friendship with some of the local Indian folks about my age,descendents of the dog people.
I mentioned to a friend about the observation that there were just as many hillbillies in western Canada as in the US,he just nodded sagely and replied(paraphrasing)Where ever there is white people there is white trash.
Later,i would verify his theory traveling all over the northern states and now via the interwebnitudes and having correspondence with people in northern Europe,i can verify;wherever there are white people,there you will find rednecks.

In my new home town in the year 2013,there are people who wander the town,drunk and scruffy with backpacks and American Flags invariably poking out of the flaps,looking for day jobs and handouts.
I have to look back and think how lucky that i have been and wish these poor people would quit blaming everyone else and educate themselves.

I love Michigan by the way.
I used to love to see the kids getting ready for Hackey season by testing the thickness of the ice like we used to test if the water was warm enough to swim by sticking a toe in in the spring time.