One of the nice things about being in academia is getting to be friends with people from all over the world—academic departments seldom boast more than a few members who are from the local area. I was telling my in-laws about how nice the new “class” of junior hires was when I was in the hospital a few months back—coming to visit, bringing us meals and gifts—and my father-in-law remarked, “Well, that’s Southern hospitality for you.” I didn’t point out that of the seven newbies, I’m the only one who grew up anywhere near the South; the others hail from points as distant as Chicago, California, India, Africa, et cetera.
So yeah, being cosmopolitnaized from the comfort of your office is nice. On the other hand, sometimes you want to talk about Hank Williams Jr’s “A Country Boy Can Survive” (and the less said about the Kid Rock remake, the better), and no one has any idea what the hell you’re talking about. It’s amazing! These people, allegedly cultured though they are, never once, when first being told about the Nashville Agrarians, had a strange but strangely logical flashback to when they were in 3rd grade, riding along with their best friend Jason Stuart in the back of a Chevy minivan on the way to the water park, Coke Icees in one hand and a comic book in the other, belting out the lyrics to the national anthem of survivalists and militia-men with total identification and with a total lack of irony while their father, who actually did indeed ride his horse to school and who once ate squirrel brains on a regular basis, looked back at them in the rearview mirror as though across a deep and unbridgeable chasm? If you can imagine! And you’re saying that that memory did not lead them inevitably to the memory of the last time, about five years ago, that they talked to Jason Stuart, who is now a deputy sheriff and whose first assignment was hanging out in men’s public restrooms waiting for someone to solicit him for sex so that he could arrest them? And who reported having this exchange with one of his perps after the solicitation had been made?
Jason: “Buddy, I hate to tell you this, but I’m a cop.”Perp: “That’s okay! I’m married!”
Jason: “Um…”
I mean, geez. What did these people learn in school? Geography? Because I didn’t. Seriously. I have no idea where anything is.
If, after revisiting the lyrics, any of you were worried about these dread visions, let me assure that I’ve seen the Mississippi River very recently, and the grim prediction in line 2 has yet to come to fruition, so we’ve got a little time still to hone our Beechnut-spitting skills.
This is one of the best tributes to a song I’ve ever read, even if it’s . . . sideways. And the conversation between your friend and “the perp” is OH-SOME.
And someone’s going to LOVE that there are four commas in the title.
I’m okay on state capitols, ‘cause I had to memorize ‘em all in 5th grade. But that’s about it. In high school, I had to take a typing class and then a separate class in “keyboarding,” which was typing, but on computers. So you can see how we might not have had time for geography.
Names I never heard in my high school English class: Faulkner, Welty, Wright, Williams.
Justifications for slavery I did hear in my high school history class: “Well, see, owners never really beat their slaves, because, think about it, now, you wouldn’t go out and slash the tires on your tractor now, would you?”
Well, if it helps explain things, our school mascot was the “Rebels,” as it was about half the other schools in our conference, so it was Rebels v. Rebels on many a Friday night (to say nothing of the Sharkey-Issaquena Academy Confederates and, of course, REBUL Academy, which derived its acronymical name from the communities of Raymond, Edwards, Bolton, Utica, and Learned.)
OH, OH. My EYES are burning.
Here’s the reason Young Master Gorjus knoweth not his states NOR his state capitals: I went to ‘Bama public school through the third grade. Well, in the public schools, you learn the states & their capitals in fourth grade. Well, my parents done put me in the private school in fourth grade, and in that system they learned them in . . . third grade.
So, yeah, every year or so there’d be like a, “hey! let’s have an easy pop quiz on the states and their capitals!” And I’d BOMB.
I once had my English AP teacher tell me that my interpretation of an Emily Dickinson poem was WRONG. Not misguided, but WRONG. My explanation was so simple and resonant with my classmates (it was just kind of obvious to us—wish I could remember what it was) that a full-scale revolt started (well, general mumbling).
When she went to the bathroom for her “break” (a/k/a, meds dosage), my pal Greg had an ephiphany and looked at her teaching manual. All of the “symbols” and “metaphors” she had been teaching us were verbatim from the book. So it wasn’t that our interpretations had been “wrong,” she just didn’t understand them. Go, critical thinking (I was back in public school by this time).
Plus, yeah, being a PoliSci major in the South, I heard some crazy-ass stuff about slavery. Thankfully jp! and a whole group of us normally shouted it all down, as did our (generally excellent) teachers. And that degree . . . well, I’m ignorant about the Midwest states, but once upon a time I could easily point to you and tell you what country was which in Africa (and its former names—quite difficult, that) (I’m looking at YOU, Congo), and also, the splinter states of the former Yugoslavia. But, uh, I can’t find Kansas to SAVE MY LIFE.
uh…i guess not….you prolly can’t run a TROT line! HAW HAW HAW !! A “crop” line
how, exactly does anyone run one of those?
Hey! I dunno! I always thought it was “trot line,” and then I saw on the lyrics site “Crop line,” and I thought, oh, I guess I misheard that twenty years ago.
I can’t run a trot line, but I have on occasion removed the fish from one.
Yah, it’s “trot line.” The Cowboy Lyrics place just got it wrong. Um, I didn’t know what it meant, so I had to look up that it was just “a long cord with a lot of fish hooks dangling from it.”
its actually trout line, fellas…as in the fish. You string it up across a creek or whatever and its like have 8 fishing poles at once…especially useful when camping. Set it up, catch the fish, come back to it later and collect the dinner.
ok, well, now I’ve looked it up and have been misunderstanding this term for years. I always thought it was “trout line” named after the fish, but I have found many a website tellin’ me she’s called trotline. Learn something new everyday, I guess this will be mine for today.
Yeah, I was thinking that, too, but Google “trot line” or “trotline” (apparently the correct spelling)—”trout line” refers specifically to a brand-name or line you are using to go after trout. The American Heritage Dictionary says that the proper term is actually “setline.”
See also Byrd v. McGill, 478 So.2d 302, 303 (Miss. 1985) (“After midnight, they returned to the lake and embarked in the boat to check the trot lines”).
We are such total, and awexxome, dorks that we actually wanted to figger this out for real. I have to admit I’m shocked that it was jp! that caught it!!
trotlines are good for crappie and brim! mmmmm
Delta fish!
I always figured that me hearing “trotline” was just the extreme accent that ol’ Bocephus had in saying trout line.
I got in trouble for “talking back” to my 7th grade English teacher because I asked her to clarify if she were saying “quiet” or “quite” (both of which were on this particular spelling test). I had already spelled “quite” earlier in the test and here she was saying it again. Turns out it was “quiet” and she pronounced them nearly identically. I mean it was like having “here” and “hear” on the same ORAL spelling test.
Isn’t it “bream” rather than “brim”?
It’s not really important, I’m just still shame-faced after calling it a “crop line.” It’s like I can’t rely on the Web to give me reliable information!
Uh, you never read Faulkner in HS and yet you wrote the sentence that begins, “These people, allegedly cultured though they are,...”?!My mother is a fish, that’s ironic!
And Gorjus, can you point out SWAPO on the map? I always thought that was the coolest name for a country. It kinda sounds like SWAT, so what’s not to like?
Well, I never read him in high school, but now I teach him for a living. So it all balances out.
One of my students from American lit survey last semester—where we read As I Lay Dying—recently acquired a beta fish, which she named “My mother,” so that she could go around saying “My mother is a fish.” Satisfying.
maybe? i can’t spell for shit. that’s how it sounds: brim.
Oh yeh. I say “brim,” too, but I’m pretty sure it’s spelled “bream,” and by “pretty sure,” I mean “positive.” I had no idea for years until I saw it written somewhere and put it all together. My folks have a couple of ponds behind their house, and so we catch-n-eat bream and bass just about every time we go up there when it’s not too cold—dad fillets ‘em, mom fries ‘em—it’s good stuff. Mmm, pondfish.
Best Discussion of the Proper Spelling of Fishing Devices and Fish on a Blog Devoted to Reality TeeVee, Comixx, and Springsteen, & Poetry. EVER.
And, St. Lou, my brain is failing me. What’s SWAPO?
My bad, Gorjus. SWAPO was an African political party (Namibian?), but I thought it was a country back then. I think I confused it with my other favorite country name, CAR. I mean the country is essentially called automobile.
Now, back to my Pocket Fisherman.
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