Redneck towns

>>1185710
Don't have a pic, but I have a story.

Stopped for breakfast in WV small town. Walk into diner past open bible on a podium at the door. About ten locals sitting there go quiet and stare with that "stranger coming" look. One asks, "Where are you from?"
"Brooklyn," I respond.
"What are you doing in the heart of West Virginia?"
"Driving to New Orleans" The seem impressed.
Another local pipes up, "I know a lot of people from Brooklyn."
"Around here? Are they behaving themselves?," I respond.
"You bet they are."
Everybody has a laugh, then the first guy I was talking to says, "He works in corrections." Basically if you're from Brooklyn and find yourself living in WV it's because you're in federal prison there.

They notice my wife's Bernie Sanders pin and call the cook out of the kitchen. "Carol some of your people are here!" They explain she's the only Democrat in town. We chat with her for a bit, then she ducks back into the kitchen to make us a couple of the most obscenely huge egg sandwiches I've ever had. Of course the coffee was weak.

>>1185713
That sounds comfy as fuck, 2bh.

>>1185726
The folks were nice, but there was really nothing going on there, and the food wasn't good. When the locals went back to talking among themselves the conversation seemed to be mostly about who had cancer and who had just died of cancer. Not really all that comfy.

>>1185710

Just out of hs, me and a buddy went to go skiing. On the way there, in Sonora, CA, we got there early and stopped at a small restaurant. Open the door and 200 people fell silent, there was a cop with a smokey the bear hat who jumped out of his seat and turned like he was reaching for his gun in a western movie, silence, stare down, then after about 30 seconds people started back to eating. Yeah, it turned out uneventful, but still uncomfortable

>>1185713
actually sounds like a cool town to pass through

>>1185710
anymore stories im about to travel to the usa from australia for 5 weeks

>>1185862
This movie was complete trash

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I'm in north Texas, near Oklahoma for now. I come from Georgia, and I've spent a little time passing through redneck-y towns up there, but around here it's cool, too.

>driving to Dallas, which is like 2 hours
>stop off to stretch, talk to this old guy selling rattlesnake wallets and homemade knives
>some of his art looks Indian, so I ask if he's native
>talks about his wife, a Chickasaw, who he married in the late sixties and lost in the early seventies
>talks the whole time as though she were still with him, like she still played the biggest role in his life
>goes on tot talk about the nature around here, recommends I visit Wichita Mountains

I look it up and go:

>drive through Fort Sill, a small town around the last active Army fort built in the Indian Wars
>see Geronimo's grave, then head up to the top of the mountain where I talk with an older guy
>points to a small mountain, saying his mom was born over that range but the doctor was too scared to cross the river in the buggy
>all-around cool dude

My main experiences interacting with locals in north Georgia is on the Appalachian Trail. Doesn't run directly through redneck towns, but plenty of rednecks go there to pass out sodas, hotdogs and burgers to hikers - it's called Trail Magic. A friend and I talked for a while with a preacher who did mission work in Mongolia (I want to go now), a toothless country guy who just had a lot of free time, and another pastor who brought filters to Africa and talked more about medicine and science than religion.

If you want a taste of America, redneck towns are where you do it desu

>>1185861
This

>>1186040
b..b..but muh Burzums!

>>1186040
Which part?

>>1185713
Brave to wear that pin. I love Bernie, and I would have taken it off/had her take it off.

>>1186408
That was out of the question - she was determined to be brazen about it knowing she was venturing into enemy territory. Funniest thing was that at a couple other stops on that trip people approaxched her and whispered, "I like your pin." Being a Bernie supporter in a redneck town was obviously something you kept to yourself if you were a local.

>>1185710
Everyone I met from Indiana so far is whitetrash but friendly.

>>1185713
>"Around here? Are they behaving themselves?," I respond.
>"You bet they are."
>Everybody has a laugh

Man, if there is one skill I wish I had, it's to be able to put people at ease like that. Nice story.

>>1186674
I'm lucky enough to come from a diverse family background. Mom's people were poor, divided between farmers and poor city dwellers. Dad's people were business executives and real estate holders. I grew up with dad bringing ne trinkets and stories for his business travels around the world. I had a prep school then Ivy League education. Yet I still learned the humble manners required at a Lancaster County pig roast (where the is no alcohol because half the folks are Mennonite). As an adult I'm a creative without a real day job, though I do have to work for a living. So wherever I go I'm something of an outsider, but I know how to make nice with just about anyone, because I'm comfortable in that role. I have no desire to be accepted or to belong - I just want to appreciate what's going on in the moment, have some sort of positive interaction with whoever is around, then move on before whatever novelty I am to them becomes tiresome.

This approach has served me well in redneck Pennsylvania bars, small town festivals in Japan, riyads in Morocco and even as a guest at a rural private Christian school in Switzerland. You just go in accepting that you're the outsider, but with a genuine interest in who the locals are and what the fuck they're up to. Most people respond well to that as long as you tailor your manners to the situation so you don't come off as rude. And when you're obviously an outsider they allow for some leeway in that area as long as you're clear that your intentions are good.

>>1185759
I've been to Sonora several times.

It's a "small-town" but it's got nothing on actual redneck towns in the midwest and south.

If you think Sonora is bad you are one sheltered motherfucker.

>>1186703
>If you think Sonora is bad
This is an attitude you have to shed if you're going to a backwater rural place. Yeah, things have been bad for these places for the last 40 years or so. They've been economically and culturally gutted in a very real sense. Local retailers have been replaced by Wal Marts, local jobs have dried up and the constant message locals get from television is that they're ignorant, trashy people with bad taste and bigoted views. No wonder their radios are tuned to Rush Limbaugh and they ate up Trump's campaign like it was candy.

Sure, these folks may mistakenly consider themselves "real" Americans, even though they're less than half the population of the country, and represent a waning demographic. But looking down on them and calling the places where they live "bad" is a serious mistake. Because for some aspects of fading American culture they are the last guardians. Regional cuisine, music and even language and religion lives in some rural American places in a way it never could in more cosmopolitan parts of the country. I have sat in a coffeeshop in Michigan's Upper Peninsula eating a Cornish Pasty while listening to oldsters speaking in a mix of English and Finnish. I've drunk moonshine made by a third generation producer of the stuff. I've been to Amish farms where the people still speak what sounds like Swiss German to me. Gospel and Appalachian music are national treasures, still alive in their places of origin. Same holds true for real Southern country cooking. And so much more of what's culturally interesting about America is only found in "redneck" towns.

There's no way I can look down on such places. If I'm going to look down on any part of America it'll be the culture-free, irrelevant suburbs, not the isolated rural places.

>>1186723
Heh, people who say USA has no culture should be redirected to this post. You sir, make traveling in USA sound interesting, that's not something you see everyday even on this board.

Care to share some of your traveling experiences in some of the towns you mention? Are you American?

>>1186731
>USA has no culture
To be fair post WWII suburbanization led to pop culture (which we do VERY fucking well) replacing a lot of regional culture in much of the country. The places where it hangs on are the places that were left behind by the second half of the 20th Century, and generally sold out economically since Reagan made neo-liberal economics the creed of the federal government. They are not affluent places, to say the least.

Also taking a close look at American culture can be a little uncomfortable, because a lot of shit went down here: slavery, the attempted genocide of the native population, the Civil War, the Mexican American War, Robber Barons, Company Towns, Prohibition, the Dustbowl and the Great Depression. And the fact that beyond the last gasps of what you find on an Indian reservation most of what's interesting is imported but cast in a uniquely American way. Listen to fiddle tunes in Appalachia and you clearly hear echoes of the British Isles. Head southwest toward Louisiana and the fiddle tunes start sounding French. Get to NOLA and meet a Mardi Gras Indian and you see some only slightly diluted African shit allegedly in tribute to kindness shown to black slaves by native people. You can head to Texas and find towns where the Germanic influence is as strong as the Mexican. (I would make the case that chile con carne is just Austro-Hungarian goulash made with Mexican chilies, with cumin substituted for caraway seeds). Also okra sure as fuck wasn't brought here by Europeans.

I don't know how helpful any of that is. I tend to view everything through the lenses of music and food, because if you look at the music and food unique to a region it isn't that hard to hear and taste the history behind it. You do have to go looking for this kind of reginalism in the US these days. To find American culture that's not packaged in a sanitized theme park kind of environment you have to go to places where tourism isn't much of a thing.

>>1186703

I never said it was bad. Where did you get that from you neckbeard faggot?

>>1186723
>>1186998
hoo boy looks like the insane word pasta blogger has escaped japan general

>>1186723
Fucking five star post bruv! Say no to ignorance!

>>1186723

Autismo, I was defending the town. What the fuck? Sounds like you were just searching for a reason to unload that canned diatribe.

>>1187018

>I never said it was bad

The thread is about depressed rural towns and your story was about being drawn on and stared at by townspeople. Pretty reasonable for me to interpret that as negative, idiot.

>>1187024
My point is that when you travel to remote places where tourism is not really an industry you aren't a tourist, you're a stranger. And what service industry is there doesn't really consider you a high priority. You have to be polite and respectful to stand even a chance of the locals giving you a peek into their culture. Expressing a sincere interest in it is a good start. Passing judgment on their worldview is a bad start, even some of it contradicts your own views. Keep that shit to yourself, because you're in their place, not yours. This stuff is directly tied to the history of America, and if you want to experience the culture shaped by it you have to take the some things you might find a little ugly along with the beautiful. Because small town America is not a theme park - it's the setting for people's lives. And for most those lives have never been particularly easy.

>>1187044
>>1186998
>>1186723
this

>>1187041
>I was defending the town. What the fuck?
The town does not need any defending. The mentality of saying shit like, "If you think that's bad you ain't seen nothing" with regard to rural America does need defending if you want to appreciate these places when traveling.

>>1187057
You're a massive twat.

>>1187132
I think I'm right, though. Regardless, back on topic:

Befriend Quebec dude while hanging in Montreal. Offers to show me real Quebec if I'm willing to buy the beers. Agree. Hop in his pickup truck and head up to the boondocks. We're talking near Notre Dame de H.A.M. (High Appalachian Mountains - the very start of the hills that become the mighty range hundreds of miles south). Dude has no chin and is high strung, seems inbred as fuck. Drives me to plot of land where his family has a trailor house and a shed with racing snowmobiles and ATV's in it. On the way we stopped for hot dogs and fries at some roadside picnic table place for lunch, and in town I buy the beer. We hike up a small "mountain". Then we drink beer and ride ATVs. (It's summer so no snowmobiles). At night we see meteor showers and a little of the Northern Lights. I ask him about the history of the area and he says it was pretty much four families for a couple hundred years, and the had to check how closely people were related to each other before anyone got married. Suspicion confirmed. Had a good time though. Guy drove me back to Montreal the next day. Pretty sure I bought him lunch, then moved on. Etienne, hope you're doing fucking well, bro.

You can always rely on 4chan to have the odd interesting thread derailed by sinking into a person argument.

>>1186731

America actually has a lot of interesting unique hybrid cultures.
One example I know of is the rare Texan-German dialect. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tS1FpkQ08ig

I don't have a experience with Texas-Germans, but in some areas of Texas there are towns (such as New Braunfels and Pflugerville) and streets with german names, and culture. Also the highly popular Schlitterbahn waterparks that started in New Braunfels and are now found all over Texas.

>tfw u live in a redneck town

>>1187180
>tfw you're a redneck but you live in a big city

>>1186723
This.

I don't want to live in some backwater economically depressed provinical town, but I try to appreciate them when I happen to be passing through. I've seen the unique regional differences and gotten to get to know the locals a little better in regular ass American places, in the past year I've travled to Jackson MI, Warren MI, Houston, San Antonio, Opelousas Louisiana, and Western North Carolina all for the first time. All the historical ways of life, ethnic backgrounds, and local economies make for quite varied local flavors, espwcially in the smaller towns, even with homogenized modern media on TV and the internet. Not to say there aren't huge swaths of poverty and cultural decline in these places, but that's all part of the story, too.

Just because someone hasn't written a book or made a movie about a hometown in the present day doesn't mean that the person living there is necisserily generic and bland. The expirience of a kid growing up in a distant Central Florida exurb or in rural Indiana is just as real as the life of someone in a more well known place for better or worse like New York City or Los Angeles.

Idk what I'm trying to say. I know that since I've become an adult it's basically impossible for me to be bored if I'm traveling somewhere new, even on a long roadtrip I still observe everything from the changing vegetation, landscapes, types of people, roads, signs, buildings... I love seeing how places are different or the same. I've barely been outside of the East Coast of the US in my life, I can't wait to travel the rest of the the country and the world. The first time I travel to another continent I'm going to flip my shit. I note the differences in types of grasses and trees when I travel North or South over a long distaance and I fucking love it, I love being observant. I don't know how anyone could be bored for more than a few hours while traveling.

>>1187213
>The expirience of a kid growing up in a distant Central Florida exurb or in rural Indiana is just as real as the life of someone in a more well known place for better or worse like New York City or Los Angeles.
One could make the case that the experience of someone growing up in an isolated place is more uniquely American because the only influences on your worldview are distinctly American ones. In places like NYC and LA people are exposed to other cultures through immigration. People are more likely to have jobs that require them to travel the country or the world, and/or have the wealth to do so for pleasure. Cultivating that kind of worldliness may be a great pleasure in life - knowing this and that about other cultures, speaking other languages, listening to music and eating food from around the world... That's great stuff. But it's simply not an option for someone who aside from their honeymoon and possibly military service isn't really going to get much more than 150 miles from where they're born. For these people local culture is culture. That's how most of America was at the start of the 20th Century. Their perspectives may seem antique and provincial because they are in an increasingly globalized world they might see as having sold them out. I'd argue they have a point. But whatever they've held onto from their grandparents' time is likely to be bits of American culture that have been lost elsewhere. Even if it's just stories of how things used to be. prewar family recipes or traditions they've managed to keep alive in spite of the television telling them such things are valueless for two generations. Those who stubbornly hang on regardless are the ones keeping some otherwise lost American culture alive.

>>1187319
Not everyone who grows up in NYC or LA is rich, plenty of real people live in the shitty neighborhoods there and rarely venture outside of them. Yes, plenty of poor white people in those cities too, if that's what you're getting at. And what's more American than the immigrant expirience? Whether it's Italians in Brooklyn and Germans in the rural midwest 100 years ago, or Vietnamese in Houston or Mexicans in the rural South today, those are all equally real immigration waves.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not some self hating white person who hates all the different European-American subcultures, or believes white people have no culture, or thinks that we need to intentionally make the white majority in America outnumbered like some people really seem to, but I'm not going to hate new immigrants themselves just trying to make it and be good Americans.

>OP starts thread about small towns
>white knights ruin it by defending something that wasn't even under attack

I grew up in a relatively rural area and I can't believe how insecure and defensive these people get.

>>1185759
It really is a strange thing in 2016 when you pass through a town and you can just feel that you're an "outsider" and everyone knows it. Nobody might be actually hostile towards you or anything but friendly, but it's clear that you're on their turf and that you're not one of them. I first expirienced this recently in the mountains of North Carolina.

I've lived around rednecks my whole life, but in an urban area of a few hundred thousand population and transplants are always coming and going and where people are familar with people from all over the place.

>>1186723
I appreciate this post

>>1187327
>Not everyone who grows up in NYC or LA is rich
True, but even the poor in major cities end up worldly in a way poor rural people do not. Say you live in the projects on the Lower East Side of NYC. Your immediate neighbors are going to be mostly 2nd and 3rd generation Puerto Rican and Dominican Americans, as well as the children and grandchildren of black Americans who came to New York during the Great Migration. Chances are you're at least partially bilingual. You're a stones throw from a lot of upscale restaurants and bars you're unlikely to see the insides of. But you're just blocks from Chinatown, a Jewish Orthodox enclave and what's left of Little Italy. If you have an extra $10 in your pocket you can go out to eat Latin Caribbean, Mexican, Chinese, Indian and Italian American meals, some of which can be had for under $5 - the cost of fast food. And that's just without leaving your neighborhood.

I am all about the American immigrant experience. I choose to live in a neighborhood where immigrants are the majority. That gives me a completely different view of America than the guys I sometimes drink with at a rural Pennsylvania bar heated with a pellet stove. They see the Indian immigrant family that runs a bunch of local convenience stores as taking advantage of the system. And they complain the places smell awful when they're eating there. Meanwhile I'm wishing that family would open a restaurant to improve the grim local dining scene. But I understand why that isn't gonna happen.

My point is that while I disagree with these guys on immigration I don't write them off or argue with them on their turf. Because if I decide to make good on my fantasy of going turkey hunting one year or learning to fly fish these are the guys whose wisdom I'm going to tap. Because they know a bunch of shit I don't. We may have completely different worldviews, but I just visit their world, I don't live there. If I did I might think differently.

>>1186723

Sounds like Blue Highways. I like you. Suburbs really should be gassed, and so should people who look down on rural folk. They're the ones who make the food you are shoving in your urbane faceholes. Americana is comfy as fuck. That's more or less the only reason I watch Supernatural, too. /trv/ to small town America, get a taste of the local culture, leave. And knifing vampires and shootan funs. Cities are cool, and rural spots are also cool. No one travels to generic copy paste suburbs for a reason.

>>1187376
Hating suburbia is bourgeoisie as fuck. Average people just want bigger, newer, more comfortable housing that's fairly convinient to their job, nobody's actively trying to destroy "authentic" culture by moving to the suburbs, they just want a place to raise their kids that is safe, close to stuff to do, and isn't falling apart. Hundred year old historical homes are only comfy if you're wealthy enough to rennovate it and put in a modern kitchen, bathroom, a new floor, and fix everything that's inevitably broken over time.

>>1187406
There are plenty of reasons why people choose to live in the suburbs. But aside from visiting suburban relatives there is no reason to travel to the suburbs. They're not destinations. They're not cultural centers. They're only meaningful to the people who have chosen to live there. Good for them if they like it. But you can't pretend they have any value beyond being the little kingdoms of their residents. There is no compelling reason for anybody else to go there.

>>1187413
Not everywhere has to be a destination.

>>1187422
True, but when discussing travel most people focus on destination places. No one is planning a trip to Levittown.

What are some kinda hippy rural areas around the US? Northern California has lots of rural places with that sort of element (mostly near the coast or close to Tahoe/Bay Area I'd guess) .

I grew up a few hours north of Sonora in Placer County. Similar in that it's Gold Country, but I don't know what the culture is like down there. The town I grew up in is about 500 people so Sonora would be much different.

There's one store and a restaurant that goes out of business every few years only to be reopened again. People are pretty redneck and like to go four wheeling and ride dirt bikes, but almost all of the youth smokes weed and most take acid/mushrooms.

I don't know if this is common in other rural place. Maybe it's the proximity to the Bay Area and the fact that some old hippies came up here to "get back to the land" and also grow weed. Nevada City is pretty Bay Area in the obnoxious ways, but it's also more Democrat.

I really got sick of that place and still don't like conservative Christians but I've come to appreciate it more. Absolutely beautiful nature. I'm planning on driving across the country and am wondering about some smaller places that might be friendly to someone staying in their truck. Sorry for the blog

pic is from the 1940's but the buildings are the exact same today.

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>>1188098

too much mercury in the water there has left me brain damaged

>>1187171
Iowa is the same way. 80% of the people who live here are people that have never left their home towns and can directly trace back their lineage to Germany. I worked in a nursing home and there were like 20 old people that spoke a lot of German but could hardly communicate with each other because they had their own dialect only people from their own towns could understand but someone from a small town 20 minutes away (which is a short distance in Iowa because small towns are widespread) - someone from Moscow, Iowa could speak a German dialect that someone from West Brench, Iowa could hardly understand but it was indeed, German.

If you ask their grand kids though, they are all Irish. (lol)

Small town Americans' relationships with each other is pretty odd, in my opinion. I worked with someone who gave their friend a ride to work every day because their friend did not have a car. I assumed "They must be good friends" - a boss came in, and this guy who gave this other person a ride to work every day had a 45 minute conversation on how much of a piece of shit this friend was and how he should be fired. His friend, who was also my co-worker, was a seemingly decent guy that worked just as hard as the guy who gave him a ride.

I saw them eat lunch at work the next day and they were best friends.

I've seen this like 300 fucking times since I moved to Iowa. What a bunch of fucking weird people. The food isn't bad though.

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>>1188698
Iowan here. The passive aggressiveness is a real thing. My Grandpa was born in West Union, and both of his parents spoke German as their home language. I can talk to you at length about the oddities of culture here... like the weird two finger wave you give people when you pass them on the road, or the bizarre way people treat having money. It's a weird place, but I like it.