Wilderness Calls own Redneck Guru shares his redneck humor with the world.
The wise old Redneck Guru...some would think he was sleeping...but no he is deep in thought!
Wise Old Redneck Guru on Olympics
It is that time again, Winter Olympics. Now when the Wise Old Redneck Guru was meditating with Grandpa Redneck, he was never advised about this great event. Might have been there were no events that would have interested Grandpa Redneck. I was fortunate enough to be watching TV in a local restaurant a couple of times in the past few weeks that were showing the Olympics on TV. The one that caught my attention was an event where a bunch of men were sweeping clean ice. It was not bad enough to see men sweeping but there was no dirt on the ice! As I watched, it made me even more curious as to why they would be chasing a piece of rock and sweeping the ice. I was informed that it was called "curling", not too sure why, just looked like sweeping to me. This got me to thinking, why not introduce some redneck events into the Olympics? They couldn't be any worse than this sweeping ice thing. Yeah, we could include some Redneck events! It would give the rednecks something to excel in and be on the big magic box. So I decided I would like to introduce four or five new events. First we could have rock skipping. For all the people that do not know what rock skipping is, it is where you take a nice flat rock, toss it and it skips across a body of water. The more skips you count, the better you are at it. Wow what a concept! This could be done in the Winter and Summer Olympics. It could be skipped on ice in the winter and water in the summer. The judging would be simple, the throwing style or the chuck, distance, amount of skips and distance between skips, could all be added up for the score. I will admit the summer games would be a tad bit more difficult to score, but I am sure they could use instant replay to assist them. Second would be Cow Tipping. Now I know what you are thinking, that would hurt the cows! Not really, it would only wake them up. It is not like they have to go to work the next morning. It could be a timed event. The most cows tipped in say, two minutes. Now it would have to be an event without a lot of noise so they could sneak up on the cows, but hey, golf is played on a cow pasture and they all seem to stay fairly quiet. The third event would be tobacco spitting. The judging would be easy, three categories: style, distance, and size of spatter. This could be a unisex event, so the redneck girls could join in the fun and competition. The fourth event would be the Hog Calling. The judges would have to all be pig farmers or past winners from the state fairs. This would be judged on style, volume and how many hogs you called in to where you are. Then last but certainly not least would be the mud wrestling competition. This event could be done by male and females but not in the same pool of mud. We would use the same rules as the Olympic wrestling is judged on, but an added bonus for the amount of mud the competitor gets on them. Now folks if this event alone does not draw ESPN, CNN and a few other alphabet channels, I do not know what else to say! Well there you have, it the Wise Old Redneck Guru's advice to the Olympic committee for the next Olympics. They should consider all the rednecks that would buy or borrow a TV to watch the games, if these few events were added. That alone would be worth a few dollars. Not only that, it would definitely be way more exciting than watching a group of men sweep clean ice!
Guru's Atlanta Adventure
Now let me tell you, the Wise Old Redneck Guru has seen something this month that would have made Grandpa Redneck scratch his head in amazement; a field that was all asphalt! James and I were traveling to a trade show in Dalton, Georgia on Interstate 75, when he advised me that we were going to travel through Atlanta, Georgia on Interstate 75. As we entered the city of Atlanta, the road added lanes until it appeared to be a large field of asphalt. Back when I was meditating on the Suwannee River in north Florida, I thought the river was wide, but this road had even the Suwannee River beat! At one point there were more lanes than you could count, as the river of cars, trucks, buses and every other kind of vehicle traveled down this river of asphalt. Hey! We were only on the northbound side! There was a river just as big flowing with vehicles on the southbound side! As we traveled north on this huge river, I noticed that the lane on the left, did not have any traffic in it. It was as if it was special and only there to look at. I assumed it was the double white lines that scared the massive amount of traffic away from it. Later I learned it was for multiple-occupant vehicles. Not sure how many people qualified for it being a multiple-occupant, sure looked like some of the vehicles had a lot of people in them though! As we traveled north in the left lane of the multitude of lanes it happened ... Yes! Our exit was way on the other bank of the river and all them cars were in our way. Now James did an outstanding job of cutting cars off to get to the exit. I sure am glad we had a Georgia tag on our trailer, would not want them folks to think we were from the back woods, driving like that! Now if the trip up was not scary enough, we topped it on the way back! When we needed to exit this time, "well you guessed it" we missed our exit again and traveled into the heart of Atlanta, Georgia. It was like the huge river had branched off into a smaller one, only five or six lanes. Now folks if you can imagine it, being dark in this big city and here we are pulling a large trailer. Well, after driving east for several miles and the buildings getting larger, we began to look for a turn around. Would have been a good time to have a GPS system, because the creators of this river forgot to put a turnaround in it. Being the Wise Old Redneck Guru, I made the decision to exit, U turn and go west for a while, in hopes to find Interstate 75 again. It seems a lot of people had this problem, where we exited there was a U turn under the overpass, for people to travel back east on the same roadway. It was like they planned for people to get lost! When we reached Interstate 75 southbound again, it was a relief to say the least! I think next time we will get a map before traveling near a large city. Heck! We may even take a peek at it!
Guru goes to big Expo
Well folks I am not going to get into how great everyone was at the Southern Ag Expo in Moultrie Georgia. The Wise Old Redneck Guru will give you his version of the massive event though. When I arrived at the AG Expo, it was overwhelming in size. There were tractors of every size, shape and color. It was truly redneck heaven! The equipment was amazing to say the least. When I grew up on a 200 acre farm, we had a two row tractor and the small equipment to go with it. Would take days to plow 20 acres with the primitive equipment, the size of this stuff would plow that field in a couple swipes. I am sure Grandpa Redneck is scratching his head in the farm in the sky, to look down on all this massive equipment. He would never have dreamed this could be possible when he was using a mule to plow his fields. Shoot! I observed a few tractors that were more comfortable than Old Blue (my truck) and might even out run him! I am sure some of them had internet access.
On the opening day of the show a man arrived at our booth, with a TV camera and requested an interview with the Wise Old Redneck Guru. Now you can imagine how proud Grandpa Redneck has to be, looking down on me, as I talked to the TV man. I will have to say "I looked good on the magic box" !
It did my heart good to see the hundreds of young farmers at the AG Expo, all full of energy and proud to be the future of farming. I can only imagine what they will invent to make the products of today look obsolete.
To demonstrate that the Wise Old Redneck Guru is never too old to gain more wisdom, I learned something at this show. I learned that the most important decision people from Alabama had to make was whether to use mayonnaise or Miracle Whip on their mator sandwiches. To shove this truth home, the vender selling knives said it was so, oh about a thousand times, during the show! Growing up we just figured that mom had planted too many mators in the garden and that was why we ate so many mator sandwiches in north Florida. Never knew it was such an important meal! Just goes to show you that one families necessity is another states favorite meal!
In closing the Wise Old Redneck Guru would like to thank the staff at the Southern AG Expo for making the event such a pleasurable one!
Wise Old Redneck Guru
SAFETY TIP FOR ALL HUNTERS AND OUTDOORS PEOPLE
Now that hunting season is here, I have a bit of new advice for all the hunters. The Wise Old Redneck Guru has done some stupid things in his time on this great planet earth, believe it or not. Normally I would not admit to such stupidity but I feel it may help a hunter or nature enthusiast from making the same mistake.
My sister was camping near Orlando, Fla., for a couple of days, so like all good brothers I decided to visit. Now Grandpa Redneck would roll over in his grave if you told him camping meant a pop up camper with electricity and running water, what has camping come to! I arrived in the camp ground on Thursday evening to visit and break bread. Sis gave me a soft drink to go with the evening meal. Like all good nature respecting rednecks I broke the little aluminum tab off of a soda can and put it back in the can, to prevent it from becoming litter. Ya I know, we have all done this many times. Then when I began to drink the soda, it happened, the little tab decided it wanted to become part of my diet. After choking for several minutes the little aluminum tab continued down into my stomach. Now that was painful, so that is why you should never attempt to eat an aluminum tab off of a soda can.
Now that hunting season is in full swing, or at least bow hunting is opening in most states, DO NOT put the little tabs from your soda and beer cans back into the can. The Wise Old Redneck Guru will assure you that you will only swallow one before you to will learn this important lesson!
Guru Goes to Big Pond
On August 1, 2009 the Wise Old Redneck Guru and Wilderness Calls conservationist (James), packed up and traveled to north, Florida to spend the day Scalloping and Shark fishing. Wilderness Calls fishing professional, Samuel Junior agreed to guide the two of us on our adventure. He was going to take us out on the big pond (Gulf of Mexico) and show us what makes him the professional salt water fisherman. We arrived at the boat ramp in Dixie County, Florida around 10:00 A.M., to set out on our adventure. Now this was not so bad, way back in the woods, on a small river, much like the one I use to fish in with Grandpa Redneck. Little did I know this was a creek and we would be traveling several miles in the Wilderness Calls boat, before we reached our destination. WOW, this was a big pond, you could not see the other side of the pond and the trees we left were over a mile away. The Wise Old Redneck Guru was sure glad he did not have to swim back to shore! There had to be a lot of fish in this big pond! First we were instructed how to harvest the Scallops. Just jump into the pond and swim, without swallowing a gallon of salt water. Trust me when I say the Wise Old Redneck Guru would starve to death if he had to gather enough of the shell fish to use as my stable diet. Samuel Jr. demonstrated why we have him as our salt water fishing professional. He gathered twice as many of the shell fish as James and I did combined. After what seemed to be hours, but was more like one hour, Samuel Jr. advised us that we had our limit and had to stop collecting the shell fish. This was a refreshing sound to my ears. He then advised us we were now going Shark fishing.
Little did I know that we would be catching a lot of fish that looked a lot like the perch, the size of your hand. Now the Wise Old Redneck Guru could get into this, catching fish bigger then the ones I had caught in the Suwannee River years ago with Grandpa Redneck. It was awesome, this pond was full of the fish. As soon as you put your hook in the water, a fish was on your line. It was not long before we had enough fish for supper, but wait Samuel Jr. was cutting them up and tossing them back into the pond. Had he gone loco? Made the Wise Old Redneck Guru scratch his head until Samuel Jr. advised me that this was to attract the Sharks. Now I seen the movie Jaws and was not crazy about the ideal of a bunch of them big critters circling the boat. The good part of this was I had the job of catching more of the smaller fish, now Grandpa Redneck would have loved this part. After we had been fishing for the large Shark for a period of time, it happened! James was snoring on the bow of the boat, when a large fish took off with one of the rod and reels, dragging it into the big pond. The bad part was that James was in charge of the rod and reel. The look on his face was priceless when the rod zipped by his head on its way into the big pond. Not sure what had taken the big pole, but it disappeared in the blink of an eye. It did wake James up and he was determined not to let that happen again, guarding the next pole with his life. Still not sure why he did not jump into the pond after the first one. James did end up catching a Shark, about two feet long, a beautiful creature indeed. Being the true conservationist, he released that Shark back into the big pond.
It was a great day in the big pond and Wilderness Calls is fortunate to have such a knowledgeable salt water professional on its staff.
The Guru's Family Reunion
It was that time of year again, when the wise old Redneck Guru's family all get together.Once a year the clan (Grinestead) all merge on the old farm and unite.Uncle JD's home is where it is held each year.I think it is because he has a pool so the newest members of the clan (children) can all swim and get out of the hair of the older members.This tradition is a dying part of the southern heritage.Each year you see a lot of the same members of the clan and each year some of the ones that failed to show the year before show up.Grandpa Redneck passed away in 1972 but his heritage is keep alive each year when his offspring get together and attempt to get along for a couple of days.As I discussed earlier in some of my responses the Guru's clan is no different then other clans, they fight among themselves but will kill if you mess with one of them, this year was no different, there was the occasional bickering but in all it was a great reunion.I did see some new faces attempting to join the clan, good luck to them.There was four generation in many sub families represented at the reunion.Then you have the occasional redneck that moved to the big cities there or better know as upadie members, but we love them to.
It was a typical redneck family reunion, boiled peanuts, beer, fried fish, corn on the cob and several different kinds of covered dishes.Before the main meal you would see sub clan groups gather together with other groups, this is how you figure out which ones are talking to each other this year, may all change by next year.The wise old Redneck Guru still mingles with the ants and uncles to gain more knowledge from there many years of life experiences.Then came the part of the reunion that everyone likes, it was time to eat.The food was blessed and god was thanked for giving the clan another year to enjoy each other, then it was time to eat.It looked like a bunch of homeless people gathered around a free soup line as the blessing ended.Within minutes the bowls of food were empty and what was once a noisy buss was silent.Now the only bad thing about a reunion is you have to eat a little of everything is order not to offend anyone.I looked like a stuffed turkey by the time it was over.
Each year the clan gathers and each year we lose a member or two and gain new ones.Grandpa Redneck would be proud of the achievements of this group of rednecks.I am sure he never envisioned such a gathering in his name or what they have accomplished in their lives.
Guru's report on going to the "big" city of Jacksonville
The month of June has been another chapter in the life of the wise old Redneck Guru, which he will not forget soon.James and the wise old Redneck Guru had to do some tremendous haggling to get a 7 by 14 feet covered trailer, to transport there booth to the trade show in Jacksonville, Florida.Now Grandpa Redneck would have been proud of his former student.Then we had to apply all of our skills and common sense to make the trade show a success.
The part of the weekend that stuck out in the mind of the wise old Redneck Guru was on Thursday, when he was checking into the huge hotel.As we traveled north on interstate 95, it seemed to me that we had been in the city for several miles before we reached the Convention Center in Jacksonville, Florida.All I had seen for several miles was huge, tall buildings and asphalt, with a few spotted trees.Now I am not sure but this sure looked like the big city to the wise old Redneck Guru.Then it happened I enquired where I could find a Lowes or Home Depot, at the hotel registration desk.The nice young lady advised the wise old Redneck Guru that he would have to go to the city.Now trust me when I say that Grandpa Redneck rolled over in his resting place from the great beyond when he heard this comment.If this young lady did not think we were in the city, I cringe to think how she would survive in the wilderness.
The wise old Redneck Guru remembers growing up and traveling to town on Saturday to purchase groceries.At that time in my life I thought that this was a huge city, now I learn that if a group of buildings that dose not have a Lowes or Home Depot it is not a city.
Times have changed scene those quite days on the SuwanneeRiver, but I do think this young lady had the definition of a city confused.
Guru goes Japanese
Well we were off to Macon Georgia for the Buck Shootout, sponsored by GON magazine. The Wilderness Calls set up team arrived at Macon on Thursday August 06, 2009 and worked diligently to get ready for the big show. At 8:00 P.M. they turned out the lights and advised us we would have to come back in the A.M. to finish getting ready for the show, that was going to open at 3:00 P.M. on Friday. That evening we decided to eat at a Japanese Steak and Sushi restaurant, near where we were staying.
Now the Wise Old Redneck Guru has eaten in a lot of different eating establishments from time to time, but this was a new one on me. We were greeted by a nice Japanese man at the door, all smiles, real friendly folks. After being seated a wonderful Japanese waitress advised us she would be our server for the evening. She was all full of life, smiling and cheerful. James advised me that sushi was raw fish, but real tasty. I am sure he was correct, for the rest of our party did seem to enjoy the raw fish, but the Wise Old Redneck Guru still likes his fish fried. I noticed that the menu had teriyaki steak on it, now that sounded good to me. The nice waitress brought out a cup of hot water that had a chicken taste and called it soup, I will admit it was very tasty, but it would have been more filling if they would have left the chicken in it. When the meal arrived the nice lady brought out a couple of sticks to eat with. Now I had heard that the Japanese eat their meal with sticks, but now I know. Grandpa Redneck always taught me that when you are eating at someone's table you are rude not to use their eating utensils. I am sure he never envisioned eating with sticks. So I did master the art of picking up food with sticks, at least the steak and vegetables were manageable. I would have starved to death eating the rice one grain at a time, however. Then is when I learned that the Japanese had a lot of redneck in them also. The nice waitress advised me to rake the rice in a small bowl and put the bowl up to my mouth and rake it in my mouth. This brought back memories of growing up and sipping soup, we would put the bowl to our mouth and sip the soup. I guess that is why when we arrived at the restaurant they were so friendly, they could tell I was a redneck and we all fit right in. It was a enjoyable evening and the Wise Old Redneck Guru would not hesitate to eat there again.
The rest of the show went well and we meet a lot of people. We are now looking forward to attending the Sunbelt AG Show in Moultrie Georgia, in October. Y'all all come and join us.
