Category: Memories

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Rabbits and Rednecks

White trash is a derogatory term in American English for poor white people, especially in the rural areas of the southern United States. The label signifies a social class within the white population, especially those perceived to have a degraded standard of living.[1] It is used as a way to separate the “good poor”, who are “noble and hardworking”, from the “bad poor”, who are deemed “lazy, undisciplined, ungrateful and disgusting”. The use of the term provides middle- and upper-class whites a means of distancing themselves from the social status of poor whites, who cannot enjoy the same class privileges, as well as a way to disown their perceived behavior.

-Courtesy of Wikipedia (Above emphasis mine)

Operative words to consider: distancing, disown. Indeed, poor social graces do not necessarily tie oneself to a socioeconomic class, and a “peer” within that class who exhibits such traits does not need to be accepted as an equal on those grounds, either. Nor being of the same race. “Redneck” is an inaccurate term to use in this story, but it was alliterative and therefore made for a catchier title. No – this story involves unarguably: white trash.

And the reason I believe trash tends to hate me so much is due to this distancing and disowning. If you’re not in my honor circle, then it’s impossible for you to take any action or make any comment that offends me. A child might target me with profane comments, but they’re ultimately empty. I can’t seriously consider a child’s words to have any merit. Against my character, they’re meaningless. There’s little point to engage in a duel of honor and wits with an inferior. Children and trash rank similarly on this ladder. They know it, and I know it. And they hate it.

But that doesn’t stop them from trying.

So it was that, some years following my last trash encounter, a different one would give it a go. No doubt emboldened by their idol of such behavior – our current president – this one made an attempt, apparently not realizing that our president is a billionaire, while he’s just a guy who cuts grass in an Ohio town with a population of 400. Not exactly a model for comparison.

On this particular day, the day after Thanksgiving, my father-in-law had invited my father and I out for some rabbit hunting on his property. With 8 acres, rising to a hill abutting a cow pasture, with neighbors on the sides, and the highway at the front, it does pose some limitations in safe shot placement. But with the hill, there are safe zones – all of which I explained to my father, not that he needed the warning. He’s been hunting since the 50s. I’ve been hunting for 20 years myself. We’ve got this.

What followed was a grand afternoon of flushing rabbits out of brush and trying to get them safely positioned. My old man might be slowing down a little, but he did snag a squirrel. I managed two rabbits myself. It was a great hunting day! Even the cows came out to check on the commotion – ultimately concluding our ventures as they blocked the ridge. I had nice conversation with #64. Mooo. It trotted away indignantly.

But somewhere in the midst of the excitement, I noticed a fog gathering. The fog turned out to be Trash Neighbor lighting his…trash. At that moment. On a windy day. He was, I assume, trying to smoke us out. A petty passive-aggressive attack, which I of course ignored and continued hunting.

And since being ignored reaffirms one’s lower social ranking (as previously mentioned), this enraged him. As I was retrieving my final rabbit from the brush, I heard yelling. But I was caught in blackberry thorns at the time, so whatever it was could wait. Of course, that gave me enough time to figure out the situation, so when I emerged triumphantly with my kill, I walked away and towards my dad to herald my prize. Ignoring the trash was also safety decision. I was overtly armed with my Remington 870, and I assumed Mr. Trash also had a gun.

I should also mention at this point that, some years back on an unsuccessful rabbit hunting expedition, he drove over to my in-laws to complain. There were no rabbits and I hadn’t fired, so his complaint was limited in nature: I was pointing my gun at his property and staring menacingly in his direction (I’m paraphrasing, since I wasn’t there to hear the accusation).

But now I had fired shots, and since I knew that he had lied before about trying to intimidate him with a weapon, I assumed any confrontation would lead to more lies, with the potential for a “defensive” need to pull a gun on me. There were a more than a few reasons to nope out of that situation. As a result, his initially neutrally-worded albeit aggressive hails turned into sputtering monologues of profanity. I had made the right call.

Unperturbed, I went about field dressing my rabbits, but first decided to call Liz and give her a heads up. Based on past events, I didn’t think Mr. Trash would let this go.

Two successful hunting runs this year, and one with my dad too!

He didn’t. He spammed my in-laws’ phone, prompting them to block his number. That’s some next-level dismissive ignoring there! Your own neighbors in the country won’t even acknowledge you now. Take a hint, trash.

But the shriveled remaining vestiges of his geriatric masculinity overpowered reason, though on some level he still retained a sense of self-preservation and, deciding against a second attempt at direct confrontation, decided to call the sheriff instead. Big man.

Turns out, he upgraded menacing waving of a gun to dodging my shotgun pellets which were apparently coming towards him. That’s one hell of a ricochet. #6 birdshot bouncing 90 degrees from their path of flight and arcing over the hill into his yard by his fire pit.

Is it possible that a direct line of sight shot would have hit him? Yes. Is is possible that an arcing shot into the air above the ridge line would have hit him? Yes. Did I do either of those? No. The only explanations, therefore, are either a shot that defies Newtonian physics, or a lie. And while I often jest about my guns in video game multiplayer matches having phasic rounds, I’ve never seen my Remington pull that off.

The authorities, it would turn out, either agreed, or at least didn’t pursue the issue out of lack of evidence. That or a trash resident with a local reputation didn’t hold much credibility against a family of educated and productive members of society. (Some Facebook comments from locals also insinuated he might be suffering from Angry White Man syndrome and has a drinking problem.) Oh, and neither my dad nor I have warrants on us! Go figure.

It was a memorable Thanksgiving week, worthy of the family archives.

But wait, there’s more!

Seeing a recurring pattern with potential for future encounters, I began a dossier. Upon asking, the Clark County Sheriff’s Department turned out to be very accommodating with their records. I mean, they have to be cooperative in theory, but it was still nice that they didn’t fight me on anything or make the process difficult. Sadly, there was no 911 call or official police report – only the initial dispatch record:

Still good to get the official details. And amusing. Note that Mr. Trash, in his last pathetic vestige to appear as alpha male, said that I “took off running the other way”. Again, he couldn’t handle being ignored, so he fabricated an image of his imposing and intimidating manliness. I’ll wager he even truly believes it, too.

On the other hand, note that he thinks I’m in my mid 30s. Aww, thanks, Mr. Trash. It must be all that not smoking and not eating spam that’s maintained my youthful complexion.

It also turned out that I could request a copy of the body cam footage. There’s a fee to do so, as personal info has to be redacted and there’s no doubt some administrative work to go along with the video extraction, but I certainly couldn’t pass up that opportunity! I was hoping for some footage of Mr. Trash, but I don’t think the responders ever spoke with him directly. But I do get some amusing still-frames I can extract and print off for family gifts.

My dad likes to preserve notable memories with shadow boxes, and this gives me a lot of material to work with. So not only did I get to go hunting and spend some time with Dad, but I gave him a good story, too. And I now have another gift in the making for him come Christmas. All in all – what a great holiday!

Thanks, Mr. Trash.

–Simon

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Friends and Vienna

No, I did not travel to Vienna in my youth. I went to New Mexico a few times, but that was about the extent of family vacations. Travel to me involved Boy Scouts, which mostly consisted of bleeding and sweating…and sometimes hypothermia. But tourism wasn’t exactly on the menu.

What I did have was a very good friend in 7th grade – Aaron. He was not a subscriber to the traditional Texan masculinity. I hate the term “Toxic Masculinity”, as it implies an inherent problem with men as a whole, but in some circumstances I think it’s the best explanation for male adolescent behavior – particularly those in Texas during the 90s. Example: the time someone broke the soap dispenser in the locker room at the pool (I was in school swimming at the time), and surreptitiously squirted its contents into my locker, soaking my clothes. That was a fun day. I’m still not certain why, seeing as I avoided the groups of larger boys and kept my mouth shut. I suppose I was just an easy target for random aggression.

Fortunately, the aforementioned friend was in swimming with me and also avoiding the bros. He was incredibly religious, like many Texans, but meant well. He gave me a pocket bible on one of these particularly bad days to try to help my declining mental state, and – for the purpose of this post – regularly shared with me his daily canned ration of Vienna sausage. I don’t know why, but he always had a can in his packed lunch. I had never had them prior, nor knew what they were. At the time, they just seemed to be small canned hot dogs. But 7th grade males aren’t very discerning with their meat products, and I thought they tasted wonderful. I had never had them since.

Then, just recently, some 28 years later, I took the kid to the liquidation outlet she likes to visit. Packed with mis-inventoried/lost/returned/written off shelves of all the crap Americans order through the mail, it’s a paradise for people possessing more time than money and trying to get a good deal on something random. Or, in my daughter’s case, someone who doesn’t know what to do with her allowance. And there, sitting on warehouse wire shelving, was a cardboard pack of Vienna sausage cans.

Mmmm, in chicken broth!

But to the kid’s credit, she’s willing to try most any food substance at least once, and agreed to eat some if I bought a $1 can of this processed meat-like…stuff, and try it with me to scratch an old nostalgic itch.

So – for Aaron! A kind soul in a desolate wasteland of Texan douche-bros.

And upon her initial bite, the kid spit it out and said it tasted like cat food. And I’m afraid that I have to agree. It was not like a hot dog. There was no pleasing snap followed by salty ground meat. It was a pressure-molded funky mush lick of the remaining meat stuck in a grinder that has to be washed out before the health inspector arrives. Yuck. Although the dogs didn’t seem to mind.

Sorry Aaron. You were a good friend and I appreciated you sharing your lunch. But I hope the times since have treated you well enough that you can now enjoy something a little higher quality. It was fun to reminisce, though.

–Simon

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Chicken-Fried Steak

Alton Brown had an amusing take on these flat meat diner foods in which he concluded that regional variances render this American staple undefinable. And if you were to try to find agreeable definitions, you would indeed be engaging in folly. Fortunately, I’m never too concerned with being agreeable here, so I’ll happily offer definitions.

Chicken-fried steak: flattened beef cutlet breaded with flour and deep-fried, then topped with sawmill gravy. Served with fries.

Country-fried steak: flattened beef cutlet breaded with flour and pan-fried, then topped with broth-based brown gravy. Served with fries.

Salisbury steak: cubed beef cutlet breaded with flour and pan-fried, topped with onions and braised in tomato sauce with broth. Served with mashed potatoes or vegetables.

There. I’ve managed to piss everyone off now.

But as for the nostalgia-based reason for this post: I miss chicken-fried steak, which was a staple of my west-Texas childhood. Every restaurant, diner, and cafeteria had it – usually as the first item on the kids’ menu. The Midwest, however, seems to favor country-fried steak. And I don’t remember ever seeing Salisbury steak outside TV dinners. And none of these variations are very common at all now, seeming only to occupy a niche in country home kitchen type restaurants like Bob Evans or Cracker Barrel (neither of which are very good, I’ll add).

But not being terribly culinary difficult, it can be easily made at home. Which I did.

Family reviews indicated that it was “not terrible”, and “not the worst thing I’ve ever had”. So I guess that’s why it doesn’t find its way onto many menus. It’s in actuality cheap food with minimal spices, relying on flavor through caloric addition.

But it did bring back memories.

–Simon

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Aquarium over the Years

Sometime in the 90s I won a goldfish at one of those rigged carnie games at the county fair. What followed is a very common narrative for new fish keepers: I loved the fish, kept it in a bowl on my nightstand, overfed it, and it died within a few days from a lack of proper equipment and my own ignorance. Some years prior the family had made an attempt at a small aquarium, and the results were similar. I find these outcomes odd, considering my father is an environmental scientist with a specialization in decomposition. I would have thought that an intimate understanding of the nitrogen cycle would have armed him with some background on cycling aquariums, but maybe his experience was limited to the terrestrial variety, or more likely – he was just absent-minded and didn’t care about keeping pets.

Despite the initial failure, my interest was piqued, and so began my lifelong involvement in the hobby. In the beginning, it was mostly trial and error, until I acquired some books on the subject (the early days of the internet didn’t have much to offer), and I finally understood how nitrifying bacteria prevented the water column from going toxic – not to mention the limitations on the total bioload tanks of a certain size could maintain. These are lessons that curiosity and experimentation continually forced me to relearn, but what fun is a hobby that doesn’t allow for constant tweaking?

I maintained a 10 gallon tank throughout high school and college, eventually getting a 29 gallon from Liz, which I kept in 4 different apartments and now currently resides in the house. Its size is just big enough to give me options, without being so big that I’d worry about the floor joists (one day I’ll have something huge). It is this tank that I’m documenting here, since it existed in the time of digital cameras and smart phones. So here’s a fun look back in my personal aquarium history of this particular tank:

The metadata on this file doesn’t include a timestamp, but I know it’s before the smartphone era. I started off with a jungle theme.
A later photo, from 2014. I always did enjoy the cardinal tetras.
2015. Note the light. Around this time I retrofitted two light housings to fit two T8 fluorescent bulbs each, and bolted them together. I was able to start growing many more plants after that.
2018. It would appear that I did some pruning. Eventually the plants took over the bulk of the tank and I wanted to give the fish more space. I was probably suffering some algae problems at this point too.
2020. The aforementioned jerry-rigged lighting system that I retired in favor of a modern LED setup. I was pretty proud of this though. I had mounted contacts and ballasts, and those clips were even holding a moon light.
2020. A later shot with the LED lights.
2023. Finally tired of the anubis-centric plantscape, at Liz’s urging, the tank was nearly completely gutted. This is probably the most professional it had ever looked.

And here’s where things went wrong:

  • I started dosing Flourish Excel (polycycloglutaracetal) to control algae. Excel has algicidal properties, and it worked well for a time at keep algae to a minimum while supplementing the plants with additional carbon, but it turns out that more than just algae is sensitive to it. The moss effectively died off, and the vals melted. I won’t be using it anymore.
  • We had an extended power outage. A filter not running will turn anaerobic, which meant my tank had to cycle again. I lost fish as a result.
  • I mistakenly set the needle valve on the CO2 tank too high. This asphyxiated half the remaining fish.
  • I pulled the dead moss and other dying plants out of the tank, and in the process disturbed the substrate sufficiently as to circulate toxic anaerobic microorganisms and kill off the remaining fish.

I hadn’t intended to reset the aquarium this year, but events necessitated it. With some lessons learned on caution and chemical dosing, I’m back on track to what will hopefully be once again a pretty tank, this time with mollies!

2025.

–Simon

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Halcyon Days

Suicide Month is upon us again, and as a result I begin to contemplate happier times. Nostalgia is dangerous with its filtered remembrance of history. It’s a driving force behind MAGA and the glory of 1950s America, and The Roaring 20s before that. I don’t wish to go back to those time periods, but I do have my own Halcyon Days. The cruelty of which, as Calvin’s dad puts it, are awarded retroactively:

From gocomics.com: https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1988/11/25

Based simply on the time periods I daydream about, I consider My Halcyon Days, or years rather, to be: 2017-2020.

As nostalgia is purely emotional, I was interested in why I thought these days were so good. Looking back through my personal timeline, here’s my reasoning:

  • I moved from hourly work to salaried. With that came significantly more work autonomy (better job satisfaction and agency), and money. In fact during this time my household ranged from the 76th to 85th percentile in national income levels. Prior to that we were 66th. If the gold standards for middle class income is the middle 5th, which would be the 40th-60th percentile; or all but the top and bottom 20%, so the 20th-80th percentile (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_class) – then we essentially overcame middle classdom during this time. For people living the standard middle class politician soundbites prior (“X# of families can’t absorb an unexpected $1,000 expense”, etc.), I think this socioeconomic change was significant to my stress level reduction for the first time in my working life.
  • I started this blog in February 2017. I think this is more a representative corollary than evidence, but if I began an intentional record of my existence, I must have been finally interested in my own continued living, and finally starting paying attention to the moment instead of potential future goals. And looking back through it, it’s apparent that I had the energy for the multitude of hobbies I maintained at that time.
  • Youth! I achieved the mental maturity to master my own priorities, while also being young enough to bounce back from failure. And I had much better cardio and strength. I just felt physically good.
  • We bought the house the year prior, and while I wouldn’t go back to an apartment now, as a new homeowner I was still excited with its future, rather than worrying about its ongoing maintenance costs.
  • I witnessed the kid’s formative years. For better or worse, a parent always looks back on the experiences with a growing kid, once that kid inevitably becomes a teenager. And now I’m once again concerning myself with her future expenses.
  • This was all just before COVID lockdowns. An irreparable societal change, some consequences of which were certainly for the better, but many of which were not. This coincided with a job promotion, but in the process I lost the camaraderie I had built with my former team and was then denied the opportunity find that same rapport with my new department. It was never the same since, despite the perks of working from home. And while the home office saves me the irritations of cubicle life which I’ve so often criticized before, it replaced that feeling of being a physical embodiment of success. The confidence I felt waltzing into the office lobby wearing khakis and button-down in a sports jacket, then returning home so-attired and parking my sedan in the driveway while checking the mailbox and waving to my neighbor…was all replaced with slipping on cargo pants and a t-shirt and walking down to my basement. The iconic suburban fantasy had ended.

The conclusion? I suppose life just had finally felt fine, and the present was tolerable, and the future held with some optimism. To quote the Wikipedia article:

“The phrase has since come to refer to any peaceful time. Its proper meaning, however, is that of a lucky break, or a bright interval set in the midst of adversity”

Which I’ve now come to identify perfectly with this period in my life, as the current times are anything but peaceful and devoid of adversity. And again, as Calvin’s dad acknowledges, it had to pass for me to be able to know it had happened at all. Those were good days.

–Simon