Redneck Boating

Uncle Bubba and Sweet Pea decided to do a little redneck boating for some weekend relaxation. It was a typical hot and sunny Saturday in the south and everyone with a boat and some free time was at the river. The coolers were full and the radios speakers crackled to the edge of distorting. At once anyone can hear old country, new country, classic rock, and some kinda hippity-hop music. And as the morning beers lead to afternoon cold ones the volume know gets twisted up on the radio and so does the gossip and hollering. Men stand waste deep in the water with their great beer bellies glowing white like grotesque, untimely full moons and fluffy ladies in bikinis float on rafts in small flotillas, gossiping about things that should never even be whispered in private. Uncle Bubba and Sweet Pea were in the thick of it, staying cool in the water and appreciating the clean air when it came as the ether is often thick with acrid boat engine exhaust; that oily smoke lingers in blue clouds atop the green waters. Boats pass by and the captains casually juggle the wheel and their beer bottle as they navigate between the legions of little kids swimming like a truckload of fishing bobbers that had been thrown out into the water. Boat props and mindless little kids is a dangerous ballet that somehow pans out.

As Uncle Bubba floated in the water, his mind nearly turned off save one woman that could be heard talking over all the commotion. Her speaking voice was so loud that when he looked over in her direction he noticed that she wasn’t even facing him and he could still hear every word. Try as he might to not listen, he still overheard her. She sat on a raft with a beer in her hand and talked to anyone in her party that would listen. There was a senior, senior, cotton-topped couple on the boat and little kids jumping in and out of the water off of the back of the boat. She regaled the wide-eyed seniors with story after story of their boating adventures. It amazed him and stunned him in that she was probably around 50 years old and yet she used the F-bomb like a southern baptist preacher uses Amen. As Bubbie heard her speak explicitly of bodily functions, the female anatomy and various other unmentionable things, he tried to image hearing these now common things back when he was a kid. Did people always talk like this and he was innocuous? Perhaps, but it doesn’t seem like it. He recalls the adults of his youth being more refined and concerned about courtesy, especially in public. He recalls people reprimanding others who might be “out of line” in their language that, “Hey, there’s women and children around.” He asked Sweet Pea if she recalled things the same way and she said that she pretty much did. Then Bubbie mentioned more evidence to his theory of a more orthodox era in that the songs that he and Sweet Pea used to listen to when they were young were apt to hint of sexual innuendo but blatant referral just wasn’t allowed, not by the F.C.C. or by society. But now, song lyrics can be descriptively pornographic and you deny a persons civil rights to ask them to turn it down, let alone off.

Sweet Pea and Uncle Bubba know that it’s just the way that it is when you’re redneck boating. Folks will be loud, buzzed, and letting it all hang out. Many of these folks are also hardworking slaves of the general workforce that make up a community; heck, Bubbie’s one of them. They work hard and play hard. They’re victims of pride and social standings, yet in Bubbie’s view a little more class and a little less crass would make things more enjoyable for everyone.