Why It's Hip To Be Redneck

It's funny how the pendulum swings. A couple years ago, people might have laughed at someone wanting to build a tiny house or go off-grid. If a person used a hammer and nails, they couldn't afford a handyman.

Welcome to a new world where citizens want to be truly independent and that means rolling up their sleeves and acquiring some skills.

Those millenials we rolled our eyes at are figuring into this new revolution. Many are learning how to repair things, build shelters, can foods. They are perhaps the first generation coming of age in a time when they realize how vulnerable they are not knowing how to grind flour or build a shed.

Throughout time, "rednecks" were the people who learned to use what was around them, knew how to fix things with their own hands, never called on a pool boy or a landscaper, maid or even barber. They could take care of their own business and were damn proud to know they could make it no matter what times they were in for.

Today, folks are jumping onboard the redneck track and eager to learn from their knowledge. With citizens working from home and able to live anywhere, lots are choosing to be in rural countryside where nature is their entertainment and gardens can be grown, food canned, and chickens free to run through the yard.

In other words, Americans are envying the rednecks now.

Those with Old World skills are valued mentors to a generation hoping to feel less vulnerable and more in control of their lives instead of on a fast train of work/buying/exhaustion and enormous rents and mortgages.

How many of us have cut our own hair or colored it ourselves? What about sewing a broken seam in a shirt? Have you gone onto YouTube and looked up instructions on how to fix your carpet cleaner? Maybe you've planted some veggies. Do you get your new finds at Goodwill instead of the mall? Are you mowing your own lawn now?

Slowly but surely we are less scared because we are less vulnerable. We are building up our community networks to go through things together like the old days when a village surrounded a member in need. One friend is strong, another works with wood, a cousin knows how to create compost....

We have a great deal to learn from rednecks and to some it's a sobering moment. For every citizen it's a necessary way of life to be out of debt, living on what you have, finding ways to enjoy what you own, having skills to not need anyone. Money piles up in the bank. Homes are fitted to size status instead of status size.

Folks are getting the chance to move near their family again and work from home, creating more emotional support that had been missing a long time.

The very ability to adapt and live a life rich in resources and opportunities is an American trait. Our country was founded by "rednecks." Everything we great American mutts have done is by hard work, gumption, believing, and uniting.

Thanks to the pandemic, we were forced to slow down, live in our homes, refind skills and hobbies, and take time to have coffee in the morning among the trees and outdoors where we could slow way down and get in tune with our world as something more than a blur as we commute.