pwt

We might as well establish something right from the get-go. I'm basically poor white trash. There's no shame in that. It's not like I'm "White Trash".


"White Trash" encompasses that group of people who:

• make their mutt churn out litter after litter of spectacularly messed up mixed-breed pups, and then tries to pass them off as some bizarre designer pooch, worth hundreds and thousands of dollars.


• never even intend to pay their freaking bills, but are always the victim


• have a severe case of chronic work-avoidance syndrome


• are stupid - - not ignorant. Ignorant people, as we all know, can be edumacated. But as the saying goes, "you can't fix stupid".

On the other hand, poor white trash is more a state of mind. We're poor white trash, and damn proud of it. We tend to like animals at least as much if not more than most humans. We are sometimes crude, but not generally intentionally mean and vicious. We really don't care about keeping up appearances. We don't follow trends and fads. There's generally at least a partial picture of a dog or two in most every family photo. We sometimes make ignorant decisions or get in a bind, but get ourselves out of it and can actually learn from mistakes. We don't take hand-outs.

Case in point: how many of you have had something repossessed? C'mon, raise your hands. What? :::squinting, trying to see hands::::

We had a car repossessed. Yep, we got ourselves in a helluva financial situation, one so bad that an attorney said, "Cut your losses, file bankrupcy". But you know, poor white trash has that crazy pride. No bankrupcy, just years of paying for things we no longer owned, right down to the last penny. When the decent car was repo-ed, we bought the Bondo Wagon. I'm not really sure why we called it the Bondo Wagon, as there was no Bondo on it whatsoever. Just acres of rust and some rather neat accessories. We had the no-hands-access to the trunk: just reach right in there through one of the rust-holes and grab what you need. And who the heck needs all those gears? Since Bondo stalled out at anything less than 20 mph, we just learned to throw the car in neutral when slowing down, and hit the gas pedal. The holes in the floorboards eliminated the need for any of that fancy-schmancy air-conditioning. You get the point.

We drove that $50 car for about 18 months while digging out of the financial mess, and drove it with pride. Any poor white trash worth their salt realizes that you have to beat people to the punch: flaunt your "I'm a financial idiot" status before anyone gets a chance to start talking behind your back.

Fast forward about 20 years: we're still somewhat financial idiots, but the money situation is actually pretty good. We have a nice little rural spread, horses, dogs, cats and the kids are grown and out on their own, both with good work ethics (yay kids!). We're the King and Queen of "oh geez, it's good enough". The best is for someone who has too much time on their hands and wants to spend the time, money and effort for that perfection jazz. We laugh inappropriately at the most inopportune times, swear too much, have several bad habits between us which we have no intention of changing, watch reality television, have been known to order pay-per-view for professional wrestling extravaganzas, and put off today that which we could certainly do tomorrow or perhaps avoid altogether.

I just wanted to get that right out there for you, the poor white trash thing.

Embrace it.