OK, you gave the context and then quoted me out of context, but I'll still go with that sentiment, too. I should also recommend the work of Jeff Foxworthy.Airball50 wrote:"there is value in understanding redneck culture"stevelee wrote:It's been over 50 years since I read it (summer before DU, per reading list) the first time, and I think I reread parts of it maybe 20 years ago, but I'd still suggest W.J. Cash's The Mind of the South. I was expecting mint juleps on the veranda, but found a description of Southern textile mill culture, mostly. I was working in the mill where my father worked that summer, so it seemed especially relevant. BTW, I am likely a distant cousin of the author on his mother's side, I figured in recent years. But then I'm almost for sure kin to most families that have been in that area for 200 years or more.
They are often overblown, but there is value in understanding redneck culture, and to some degree linthead cultue, in reading some the studies of Scots-Irish characteristics that were in vogue, what, 15 or so years ago.
+1!
Also, I see that I used the term "linthead." I had never seen or heard the word until some time in my adulthood. I don't know if it started out as an insult or as an affectionate term of group identity. Maybe my not having encountered it in Shelby is explained simply enough by the fact that many of the mills, including where my father worked, dealt with synthetics rather than cotton. I got my literal linthead credentials when I worked in Kings Mountain the summer of 1965. I spent part of the fall of my sophomore year coughing up bits of cotton.