White Trash

Stepping outside into the early morning light most days this summer, I’d sleepily pick up the garden hose and begin the morning watering. In the dry heat of our arid summers, the Sun’s rays beam like lasers without the blanket of humidity to diffuse them; the winds sear and plants suffer in the seemingly endless high heat. I’ve always preferred watering my gardens by hand and in our new front yard garden, the only spot for sun all day, this year was no exception.

Unlike any other gardening year, though, this summer I kept noticing a vague sense of unease that was tough to shake. As the daily hour or so of standing in rising morning heat went on, my mind would follow the same path: an unexplained sense of disquiet, followed by attentiveness to all the flowers, vegetables, and fruits growing, then my thoughts would float away, continuing on in various directions as I kept to the mindless task.

Then came that one particular morning, when long-forgotten memories came crashing in.

“Look at that White Trash, just sitting there. It must be ten o’clock in the morning. Why don’t they get off their fat asses and make something of their lives?”

Sitting next to my mother in the front seat of the car, my eyes barely clearing the dashboard, I’d stare at the offending adults as we passed by on our way to the lake. I didn’t reply, as no answer was expected. I heard some version of this most times when we drove to the lake, and we drove to the lake a lot when I was a kid, every season but winter.

These disparagements uttered by my mother were always saved for those who lived in trailer parks — those who were white, anyway. Those parks came one after another, lining the roads north of our city, the ones near the Dixie Speedway that roared (that still roars as a matter of fact) with hopped-up old cars careening around an oval dirt track every Saturday night. These were parks with old, shabby, aluminum single-wides and 100% white occupants — rednecks to my mother’s eyes, but she never called them that. She called them White Trash. I still cringe when I hear her voice in my mind.

“Look at that White Trash, wearing his undershirt outside, plain as day. Doesn’t he have a job?”

That the man might work a night shift never seemed to occur. The children got to my mother, too.

“Don’t those White Trash children ever go to school?”

Those lucky kids ran around as free as a bird, as far as I could tell, all barefoot and brown — barefoot and rust, rather — those kids in overalls or shorts and not much else were scrawny, barefoot and rust-colored, thanks to the ubiquitous Georgia clay that landscaped those late 1960s, early 1970s places that dotted our route. I don’t remember even one kid being obese, these kids were lean, wiry. High fructose corn syrup-laced junk food, and video games, came later.

The more we passed by those various groups of kids, laughing and playing under spindly white pines, the more I’d stare and wonder about them all. Didn’t they have chores? or books? Why didn’t their mommas make them wear shoes? I had a mother, but those kids always had mommas in my mind. That name seemed so much cozier to me, friendlier. I’d never call my mother Momma, she might get mad or worse, just laugh at my silly notions.

I’d make up stories about them as we drove along. Must be they’re all cousins, I’d decide, cousins who live together in there and play Kick the Can, barefoot, every night. Their mommas like to laugh, I’d decide, and I bet they make fried chicken all the time — they probably don’t ever have to eat baba ganoush. Or creamed chipped beef on waffles. Or Brussel sprouts.

My mother was an adventurous cook for that era, but she was just being willfully torturous, in my childhood opinion. I wanted to eat fried chicken every day while she would only braise skinless chicken breast, usually with some gooey stew of overcooked vegetable on the side.

I could work myself into a full fantasy about those trailer park kids.

They must have the toughest feet in the world — I bet even nails can’t get through their feet. I was envious of that accomplishment, I wanted tough feet too, like the Indians from long ago (no one said Native American back in those days), Cherokee or Creek, who left their arrowheads and pottery bits around our area of the lake that we lake kids liked to collect. Warriors must have made those arrowheads….I wonder if any of those trailer park kids have arrowheads….I wonder if any of those trailer park kids are really Indian warrior kids…maybe they are… and I’d look with renewed interest next time to see if I could tell.

While these kinds of daydreams would stay in my mind long after we drove out of view, my mother’s outbursts of opinion would last far longer, forming my earliest sense of How One Ought to Behave and What One Ought Never Do. Even after I’d grown and formed my own sense of the world, some of her snobbish pronouncements from childhood, long since shoved away in my deepest subconscious, would pop out unexpectedly here and there to shade my opinions with her biases. I had to learn to look out for those shadings, learn not to think just like she would sometimes.

“Vegetables!? Can you imagine? Planting tomatoes right outside the front door? Why, haven’t they any sense at all?” she would say on another drive past the parks.

I couldn’t see any other door to plant them by, or any back yard to plant them in, either. Isolated beams of sunshine shown down through the scrawny pines onto rich, leafy columns of home grown produce, staked and twined, with newspapers all over the ground between them.

“Why do they have newspapers all over the ground, Mom?”

“Keeps the weeds down,” she replied, but I didn’t see weeds growing anywhere around those trailer parks, just red Georgia clay.

“How’s the water get through when they water them?”

“It soaks through, the papers keep the dirt moist longer so they don’t have to water so much….and never you mind. They have no business putting their vegetables in their front yard. That’s just tacky.”

That phrase jolted me back to current day as my stomach suddenly roiled. My drifting mind, my pleasurable mood, instantly disappeared. I turned off the hose and began to coil it up as my mother’s not-so-forgotten words repeated themselves:

“They have no business putting their vegetables in their front yard. That’s just tacky.”

Looking around, I took in my beautiful, thriving garden, the one that’s helped us get by in these tough times, the one that’s helped me grow my own roots out here in western soil, the one passersby all say looks lovely — my garden that sits right in the middle of our front yard — that now is our front yard.

Turning back toward the house, I firmly clamped down my not-vague-anymore disquiet, but not before one last thought snuck in — still sneaks in. My mind fleetingly imagines a little girl who might drive by my house with her mother, a mother who declares my garden tacky, and me, White Trash.