A Journey into the Redneck State of Mind

By John MacCormack, Texas Observer. Posted September 14, 2007.

On a remote East Texas ranch, surrounded by thousands of rowdy Southern whites, many drinking heavily and driving all-terrain vehicles at eye-popping speeds, the young German confronted images of mayhem and depravity. Flula Borg, a tall, curly haired musician, was an accidental visitor to the Texas Redneck Games outside Athens in early August. He came as part of a Los Angeles film crew keen on recording a bit of the backwoods revelry.

The 26-year-old Borg's only preparation for the resulting cultural collision had come in Germany, first from watching popular American shows like the "The Dukes of Hazzard" as a child, later from grown-up movies that cast rural Southern whites in a far harsher light.

With a goodly number of Confederate flags flying, crude signs asking women to disrobe, and the occasional "White Pride" tattoo on a sallow chest, the event's early signs were unsettling. "They seem friendly. I was a little scared. You see movies. You think they'll be loud, throwing people around," Borg said shortly after arriving, still feeling conspicuous as a foreigner. Having a tall, black cameraman with flowing dreadlocks in his group only added to Borg's anxiety.

"I was worried they'd be racist. I'm worried because I don't have tattoos and everyone else is wearing wife-beaters," he confided early that Saturday morning. Hours later, after viewing various gross and silly contests, including some that resemble ancient rites of public humiliation, and competing in the mattress chunk (taking third place), Borg had relaxed.

"Wow, it's crazy. It feels a little like a movie. I don't know anything like this in Germany," he said with open amazement.

As midnight approached that roasting Saturday, the fourth annual edition of the games staggered toward a rowdy, wasted crescendo. Half-clothed women screamed and threw panties at Kevin Fowler and his band on stage while sunburned, mud-flecked men, buoyed on beer and carnal impulses, bellowed out indelicate propositions.

Lost in the roiling, fetid scrum were the guys in black T-shirts from "Girls Gone Wild," who had spent much of the day recording half-drunk blondes in unclothed poses.

"It was a mob. Lots of beer-drinking. Lots of hell-raising. Girls on guy's shoulders, lots of them without shirts. I saw a couple of naked women driving ATVs. It was better than a titty bar," laughed Patrick Holt, 40, a Fort Worth computer programmer with deep redneck roots.

With his head wrapped in a Confederate-flag bandana and wearing a shirt that read, "Loud Pipes, Longnecks and Loose Women. Everything Else is Just Bullshit," Holt could have written the game's dress code. While many of the thousands at the four-day event on a sprawling 3,000-acre ranch came to race ATVs on the backwoods trails, others wanted the chance to turn loose their inner redneck animal.

"As long as we're out of harm's way, we're not hurting anyone, and we're having fun. Life is short," Holt said later. "I didn't see too much bad stuff. There was one guy who got way too drunk, fell off his ATV, and gashed his head open. When people tried to help him, he freaked out and started swinging. When security came, he ran, and they had to tackle him."

Beyond the gimme caps, heavy drinking, and blue-collar rowdiness, exactly what makes a redneck in this enlightened age?

"It's hard to explain. It's like the opposite of an Aggie," said Mike Maxwell, a welder from Longview who spent the lost weekend in Athens throwing strings of cheap beads at passing women.

While the etymology of the word redneck is not clear--it stems either from the sunburned necks of hardworking Southern whites or, more remotely, from red scarves worn centuries ago by rebel Scots unwilling to accept the Anglican Church--until recently it held little ambiguity. Redneck meant lowdown, poor, shifty, ignorant, bigoted, and hopelessly sorry.

In 1974, Larry L. King wrote a lengthy piece for Texas Monthly reliving his harsh, redneck upbringing in rural Texas and disabusing anyone of the notion there was anything remotely attractive or glamorous about any of it.

"Of late, the Redneck has been wildly romanticized; somehow he threatens to become a cultural hero," wrote King, who grew up hard-working poor in Eastland County and then moved to Midland to continue as working poor.

"Perhaps this is because heroes are in short supply in these Watergate years, or maybe it's a manifestation of our urge to return to simpler times," he mused, harking back to a bygone time free of computers, crooked politicians, and urban tangle. Then he rejected the popular concept.

"Attempts to deify the Redneck, to represent his lifestyle as close to that of the noble savage, are, at best, unreal and naïve," he wrote, going on to analyze the redneck as a hapless creature worthy only of pity and avoidance.

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Veteran Texas journalist John MacCormack is a reporter for the San Antonio Express-News.

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