riding mower

It has been said that necessity is the mother of all invention.  If so, I think the combination of laziness and beer must come in a close second.  I think the contraption shown here is the most ingenious thing I have ever seen (ya’ know, other than my computer, the electricity making it run and the human body, yadda, yadda, ya…).  I ask you, who has more of the aforementioned combination of necessity, laziness and beer than North America’s redneck?

Clearly, a hard-working, hard-resting, God-fearing redneck without the financial wherewithal to acquire some mad-fangled riding lawnmower contrived this beautiful solution.  Genius, I tell you.  By employing some gears and pedal-power a standard reel mower is transformed into a veritable gobbler of grass (I am assuming, anyway).  And during times of recession this is exactly the sort of ingenuity we need.

Who do you think invented the brick in the toilet tank? Some Yankee do-gooder? (well, maybe.)  What about the beverage koozie? huh?  Who knows what great discovery the back woods will release on an unsuspecting world.  I can barely breathe for the suspense.

The Harris Tweed Shop

The textile and clothing industry, like every industry, has been facing the green facts.  Cotton, the big fiber on the block, is taking its hits. Being half granola and half redneck myself I can feel both sides of the issue.  My father and grandfather supported themselves with cotton, yet I like to strut around in nothing but hemp.  Good enough.

But as it turns out, cotton makes wonderfully soft and affordable clothing while using relatively high levels of chemicals, resources from the soil and lots of water (during growth and processing).  But, if we know all this about cotton, why do we still wear so much of it, and more importantly, why do we keep so much more of it hanging in our closets and tucked into our dressers?  Most of us keep buying clothes as if we intend to throw away a brand new green suit once it gets its first bit of pheasant blood on it.  Sheesh.

Once again, we can learn something here from our Redneck brothers (I’m not so sure about sisters).  Rednecks are particular about their clothing.  It has to be functional and affordable.  And now, I’m not making light.  These are two very serious considerations in clothing that I am not so sure civil folk understand.  For a redneck shopper these two dueling forces create a dilemma kin with taming the jackalope.

Functional means the garment of clothing should work properly for many, many a donning.  Working properly means a variety of things such as holding dead quail, repelling manure of various forms, and at a picnic being able to transition from cowboy volleyball to goat roping to neckin’ on a blanket (the ideal date, by the way) all the while disguising the discreet bear belly.  Many, many a donning of an article of clothing implies that the owner of said article can’t quite recall its purchase.

And all of this has to come at a redneck value, and rednecks know value.  Jeans that tear the first time you cross a barbed-wire fence ain’t no value.  Fireworks that can’t even blow up a mailbox ain’t no value.  And a beer that can’t make life look better certainly ain’t of no value.  Clothing is to render its promised service, to cloth the naked form and allow said form to function in an hostile environment without suffering undue harm.

A brand name isn’t worth anything more than that very promise of function.  A redneck might pay considerably to attain that function, but too much, and the brand risks looking disingenuous.  Because, after all, Adam and Eve got on just fine in the raw, and if it comes down to it, I reckon I can to.  And that is the bottom line, isn’t it?  Clothes should serve a function, and if style happens to be a derivative of that function, then fine.  But no self-respecting redneck would be caught dead with a closet full of brand names knowing he came into the world, and he would go out, in nothing but his God-given birthday suit.

Reclining Toilet by Downtowngal

imagination.  And a recent toilet snafu has left me exercising my imagination as well.  I manage a house that has 5 toilets in it.  That’s a lot of shiz, a lot of flushing, and a lot of things to go wrong.  A couple of weeks ago the last of my “jet-pack” toilets (you know, the kind in public restrooms that would frighten the piss out of you if you hadn’t just voluntarily evacuated it) finally lost its flush and had to go.

The problem is, I don’t have access to the ranch truck anymore, I live in a city and I drive a Honda Civic.  I can fit my tools in the trunk, but not a broken down toilet.  Clearly you can see my dilemma.

The redneck in me won out on that day, and I just decided to deposit the toilet discretely in the side yard and leave it.  Heck, I even threw the tank in the garbage can.  What’s a broken down toilet in a yard among friends and neighbors?  Oh, did I forget to mention that the house I manage is across the street from a major public university and a couple houses down from a bar?

Yeah, within a week the toilet had been redeemed by a passerby and had discovered new life.  I can’t say this was totally unexpected.  I seem to recall discovering an abandoned toilet on campus during my own student days.  The granola in me thinks this is great.  A rejected object is being reused.  But, on the other hand, a yard-crapper of this sort doesn’t really seem to be sustainable or ecologically safe.  This brings me back to the title of this blog: Toilet Gardening.

Just think of all the great ways a ceramic toilet could be used to enhance the aesthetics and functionality of a residential garden.  This is the perfect combination of yard pickens and sustainable living.  It could be a mulcher and planter all in one, a rain gage or quiet place to take a load off and enjoy the peace of nature.  But to cut down on public indecency, I think I have decided to use my sledge hammer to create a nice ceramic grist I can use in the bottom of planters and for drainage in the side bed where water collects.  The sledge hammering will at least be fun, but if you have better ideas I would love to hear them.

Seriously, am I the only one who remembers such UIL competitions as “Number Sense?”  As a 4th grader I was taught to add and subtract several three digits numbers in my head and write down the answer.  I can routinely amaze people at the grocery store by pulling out the right amount of cash to within a dollar before my couple dozen items are tallied by the register.  But it’s not that hard, I swear!

I am a bit of a purist here, but I don’t even really like to use a calculator.  I know that I am typing right now on a computer, and I am not advocating that we eradicate all technology.  I just think that it is worth while to do some things by hand.  I am not convinced that putting a computer chip in everything is the best way to go.  Luckily for us, rednecks all over the U.S. are still doing things “back ass-wards,” and by that I mean manually.

Rednecks are often the last people to adapt a new technology, only after it is well vetted by the gear whores and giddy fad followers.  This preserves them from a certain shallow lack of sincerity.  Are we really all going to go out and slap smart meters on our homes for several hundred dollars in order to tell us how to shut off the lights to save twenty bucks?  A redneck won’t.  Are we gonna’ go out and replace our light bulbs with CFL’s to save electricity and money in the long run?  Rednecks all over the U.S. waited until Home Depot was handing them out for free and replaced all the bulbs in the barn too.

Let’s just say that while I’m typing on this here computer I am secretly hiding an EMP that my Mac doesn’t know about, and I still remember how to survive “redneck style,” by the sweat of my brow and the fruit of my hands.

It’s getting worse isn’t it?  I know, its probably my fault.  My grandfather could palpate a cow,castrate a steer, fix a tractor, grow an orange, build a house, harvest cotton, train a dog, milk a cow, weld a gate, speak Spanish as well as English, tell when corn was ripe, hear quail chittering from fifty yards away, tune his car, converse about sports as well as politics and sing in the choir.  My dad could still perform most of these tasks well and could write poetry too.  What about me?  I write a poem from time to time.  I am pretty good at telling when corn is ripe.  I guess I could still clean a quail with a little effort and some time.

Most rednecks still know general knowledge in several major categories of living, while the rest of modern civilization seems to be trying to become worthless in every way but one.  And damned if I ain’t following the groovy train right off the bridge.  Correct me if I am wrong, but don’t highly specialized species usually run into highly specialized brick walls at highly deadly speeds on planet earth?  I am guessing that the giraffe is going to have a harder time adjusting to global climate change than say, the rat.

Maybe this is one of the reasons we are going to have such a hard time weathering global economic change too.  Rednecks may not understand the value of their generalized skill set, but the rest of us would benefit from broadening our horizons a bit.  When it comes to your survival remember, keep it general, stupid.

Now I realize that if you have spent much time in the wilderness then you have probably stumbled upon the remains of a redneck circle and might have been disgusted at what you saw.  Tell tale signs of a redneck circle may include such items (but not limited to) Pabst Blue Ribbon cans, spent shotgun shells, rifle casings, dried vomit and empty containers of assorted propellants.  But let’s not leap to judgment here.

After reading both Richard Louv’s book, “Last Child in the Woods,” and Pearl Buck’s classic, “The Good Earth,” last year I began to grow ever more grateful for my redneck roots.  Apparently, those of us who spend unfettered and unsupervised time in the wild learn to appreciate it much more.  Those people also end up being much more likely to defend and care for it.  Well, rednecks get their red necks from living outdoors.  I knew the wild before I knew the awkward anxieties of puberty or the doldrums of adolescence.  I knew the wild while it was still enchanted.  Every redneck did.

I might have left a few shotgun shells and broken high school calculus text books lying about carelessly, but it has not been difficult to divest myself of such behavior.  What the redneck has of much greater value is an affection for the outdoors.  ”Get out of the house!” barked from an angry mother bear to her redneck cubs should be translated, “Go and explored the unbounded grace and beauty of mother nature.”

We need these redneck champions of the wild to instruct us.  For so many kids today the only bark they here is, “Go to your room!”  And this only means it is time for ipods, earbuds and personal gaming devices.  The least you can do is take a lesson from the redneck.  The next time you drink make it a Pabst, and do it in your front yard (feel free to recycle the can).

These efforts at gathering in the wild crops from the creek and bramble are only one branch of the redneck supported agricultural tree (which has now become endangered).  The second, and more important, is gleaning.  Some today might call this stealing, but come on.

All the best agrarian societies made allowances for gleaning.  But in today’s modern agroindustrial world there is no place left for the humble redneck to stop along the side of the road and pick up some peaches that have come to rest recently on the ground or to pluck a few ears of corn from the stunted stalks at the end of the row.

Now that so many of our rednecks can no longer survive in their native necks’ of the woods, what are we to do with the urban redneck scavenging for wild or second rate fruits and vegetables to round out his dietary needs?  How many parks plant actual fruiting trees?  What mall tree strip houses melons or squash?

With wild lands pushed further from our populous and farms run like machines, gleaning and gathering have become ghosts from America’s past, but they should not be dead to us.  Us urban ilk, currently gorging on CSA’s (community supported agriculture) and urban gardens, could learn a thing or two about sustainability from our rednecks brethren and their RSA’s that have helped strengthen the weak for generations.

Since roaming far and wide from my boisterous cousins back home I have spent much time in search of a healthy rhythm of life.  You know, a regular and constant way of living that is sustainable at its core — both productive and inspiring while being restful and reflective at the same time.

Rednecks have long learned this delicate and artful balance.  A good example would be the Saturday afternoon games of beer volleyball that always followed a hard week’s work; or a Friday night private beer and rodeo at the half-sized arena at our neighbors; or even the late Tuesday night beer and stargazing that followed a long day of dusty labor.  With all of these it was always work and responsibilities first and then relaxation and beer second.  And it was in this way that I learned a healthy rhythm in life.

The crafty redneck has even become master of occasionally mixing the two — rest and labor.  Thus, the love affair with the riding mower.  While one rides the mower one is free of hassle, anxiety and care.  Impossible for the guilt of laziness to invade and immune from the aggravating nag of the “to do list”, the riding mower is equivalent to the fortress of solitude.  When all other healthy rhythms come crashing down, there is always the John Deere or the Kubota for regaining perspective.

The problem for me was that I had hay-fever, and so it was my brother’s job to ride the mower and mine to fix it every time it broke, which my brother was sure to make every time he rode it.  Thanks.  Grease and busted knuckles just didn’t provide the same solace.

Now that I live in Salt Lake City, how do I regain the lost afternoon-beer-in-the-ally rhythm? or the 2:00pm thunder-boomer break for watermelon and ice tea?  I have a hard time even defining my duties anymore.  How can I know when I am done with them?  How can I know when there is time to lie down in the garden or on the porch and pull the brim of my hat down over my eyes?  All I know is that I need a little shot of that redneck rhythm, and a beer, maybe a Lone Star.

First off, I have to admit, I am pretty much a libertarian — a redneck, granola, libertarian.  I got my first lessons in politics on the ranch, and if you plan on running a productive beef ranch you have to make the decision to allow only the most virile and quality male cattle reproduce.  The vast majority of the male heard it “cut” or castrated before they are a year old.  These steers are sent off to the feedlot and the meet packing plant.  Only the select few are allowed to become full grown bulls and guide the genetic future of the heard.

Now I don’t mean to be crass, but this is the way you gotta’ run a nation.  If the goal of ranching were to have a bunch of healthy, well adjusted and emotionally stable cattle for “putting out to pasture” then a socialist program could succeed.  If your goal is to produce quality beef only the libertarian approach will do.  Europe has been ranching the socialist way for decades now.  That is why their outlook on life can only be described (in the redneck lexicon) as “vegetarian.”  Much of the developed world seems to be jumping on board with the vegetarian ranching way of life — healthy, happy and well-adjusted, but with no beef.

But what the U.S. does is beef.  It is what we are.  We are meat eaters, innovators, bold and daring “grab the bull by the horns”ers.  Let others sit around and nibble grass and quibble about tolerance and diversity in regards to current peoples and trends.  We make the peoples and the trends.  We run cattle.  Now sure a lot of people are going to lose their nuts while only a few rule the heard.  But that is why the redneck invented the Sunday Calf Fry or the Testicle Festival.  (Actually, I am not sure who invented this, but I am guessing it wasn’t a hippy.)

Make it a celebration.  That is what we are in need of now.  Lots of weak companies in the U.S. need to be cut.  But waste not want not.  Call up the friends and relatives (especially the unemployed ones) and celebrate the taking of corporate balls with a B-B-Q and a picnic.   The strong companies that survive will run the economy better than the pathetic, wobbly-kneed companies that are bound for the packing plant eventually.  It’s the libertarian way.  It’s the redneck way.  It’s the American way.

Now don’t get me wrong, the government has a role just like the rancher does.  He builds fences and pastures.  He puts the bulls in with the cows at a certain time and removes them at another.  He regulates the herd.  If a certain bull goes feral and starts tearing through too many fences or goring other bulls then that bull might get shot.  It’s not a free-for-all, and it’s not a fair-for-all.  Sure, it’s painful as hell sometimes, but it is possible that what is detrimental to the many (steers getting their nuts cut off) can be beneficial to the whole (a stronger and healthier herd).  Cowboy up, Obama.  Cowboy up.

Anyway, Granolas come at the end times a little less “religiously,” but just as dogmatically.  For any good granola the end is near due to man’s incessant and beastly abuse of the earth.  For Mormons and Rednecks the end is near because of damn gentiles and damn liberals, respectively.  But, the results can be the same for all three groups.  They know how to make the most out of a little and are ready to do so after civilization falls.  Whether you are in the wilderess of Texas, Montana, Oregon or Utah you are likely to find the “off-griders,” or as I will refer to them in a coming blog, “The bunker nuts and belly-achers.”  Full disclosure at this point requires that I share with you, the reader, just how tempted I am to become one.  But as of this point I still own a traditional home connected to the grid here in SLC.

These folks may be more granola or more redneck, but the truth is they live off of sustainability.  If one is preparing for the end of the world as we know it then one has to figure a way to get by in a pretty dang sustainable manner.  So the nut job who just built a place out beyond my parents new place that resembles a cement and steel bunker 40ft. below the surface of the ground running completely off of wind with a propane back-up might have something to teach us.  Of course he will hunt us all down and kill us if he finds out I mentioned him in this blog, but I’m pretty sure he would see it as a security risk to network his non-existent computer.  So I think we’re O.K.

But seriously, just how many oats should a sane individual keep in their basement?  Should I be concerned about learning to make my own soap, fuel, ammo and clothing?  Are we, here in the U.S., on the fast track to life Beyond the Thunderdome?  Or is this little slump we are in now going to pass like Y2k and all the rest?  I have a little garden, but it won’t last long if the Mormon church won’t take us Gentiles in after Big Brother falls to his knees and is beheaded.

Should we all be taking crash courses in Lunatic sustainability?  Or am I O.K. just recycling (even glass!) and using cloth diapers?  I could try planting hemp in my back yard.  Then I could make my own diapers, but I’m sure it’s illegal and…  There I go again, thinking like a norm.  I am not sure I have what it takes for the end times.  At least I can have a decent hope of orderliness here in Utah where I am sure the Nation of Deseret would find its feet pretty quickly if given the chance.