I am a redneck. I am not ashamed of this. I was raised on family values, lack of desire to wander far from home, an affinity for the outdoors, a desire to work with my hands, and a deep appreciation for cheap beer and trucks. I also shot my first rifle before I have any memory of having done so and the only reason why I know it happened is because of the photos - which were printed and are in a family photo album at my parents' place.
I do not hide from these things and I never did because I am not ashamed of them. When I was in college most of the people that I went to school with were the opposite of me but I didn't change my ways. I was happy to present myself as the country boy that I am and I always will.
There are a number of stereotypes that are associated with rednecks that are a little unfair though and while I don't really care, I want to dispel a few of them because they simply aren't true. I already covered NASCAR and trailer parks, but now I want to move on to one that might have been true 30 years ago, but then again, it was true for everyone else as well.
Let's look at rednecks and tobacco.
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There is this image that people have of rednecks and how everyone smokes or uses dip or chewing tobacco. While this might have been true many years ago it was also true for almost all of the demographics that I went to college with. The preps, the jocks, the computer geeks, you name it.... everyone smoked and that is just the way that it was in the 80's and 90's. The way things are now it is kind of a rarity when you see people smoking because you aren't really allowed to do it anywhere. North Carolina is a tobacco state so the taxes are kept to a minimum but the price of a pack of smokes has gone up here more than 400% since I was in college.
When I was an undergraduate I would say about 80% of the people I knew were smokers. Packs of ciggies were less than a dollar if you were willing to smoke an off brand and they were around a buck and a half for well-known brands like Camel and Marlboro.
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I don't know many people in their teens and 20's these days because it would probably be considered creepy if I did. There are a few men on my jobsites that are in this age demographic and very few of them smoke. We have a lot of OSHA rules on our jobsites and one of them is that you have to be very far away from any flammable materials if you are going to smoke. Since my sites run on efficiency and we are a team, we will not tolerate Johnny running across the street every half and hour for a smoke. So if these guys do smoke, they do it on their own time.
it was very different when I was in college as you could smoke just about anywhere. I remember every entrance to any building on campus had ash trays right next to the doors and some of the buildings even had dedicated smoking room inside that were not on a different ventilation system and the door was open. Even though I smoked at the time I hated being near these rooms because they stank. One of the craziest places that you were allowed to smoke was a minor grocery story where the shopping carts had ashtrays built into them and there were sand ones at the end of each aisle.
Obviously none of these things exist today.
When the world and the United States started making a shift to get people to stop smoking via mostly taxation, the rednecks followed suit just like everyone else. Also, of the people I went to college with as we got older we started caring a bit more about our health and this was especially true with anyone that had kids. Of all the people I know that I went to college with and even high school, very few of them still smoke cigarettes.
Rednecks are no exception to this despite the stereotypes that people have of us that we just spend all of our money on stupid shit like beer and cigarettes. I hate to disappoint you, but almost all rednecks stopped doing chew and dip as well. While it was popular back when we were young it is kind of frowned upon to have a jar of dip spit in your hand at a gathering. It certainly isn't a turn on for the ladies :)
When I visit my friends who live in more urban areas than I do such as one of my roommates who lives in Brooklyn, NYC, there are just as many smokers there as there are here. The difference is that when I visit my friend in Brooklyn I very well may be the only true redneck in the entire city.
Rednecks get a bad rep that I don't think we deserve and while I don't get all worked up about it in the way that we are portrayed in films and tv shows, a lot of it simply isn't true. We are just people who enjoy living away from city life and believe family is the most important thing in life. Oh, we also have guns, lots of guns. But we are no less concerned about our health than any other segment of society.
I haven't had a cigarette in many years and don't actually know very many people who do smoke. The few redneck pals of mine that do smoke have an almost sense of shame about it when we are in the Elks Lodge and they have to sneak off for a puff that they don't really even seem to enjoy and we pick on them when they return because they stink! I don't know anyone that dips and the idea that rednecks are all over the tobacco all the time simply isn't true.