re: #209 Fat Bastard Vegetarian

THERE’S NO FUCKING “R” IN WASH!

My mother’s Texan family says “warsh” and “pursh” among similar usages. They seem to be very proud of this for some reason. I wouldn’t fault them for this, except that when I was a child, they made a point of heaping ridicule on my father’s impoverished Ozark hillbilly relatives. I remember when we were visting my dad’s folks when I was about nine years old. We stopped at an Ozark gas station, bought some sodas and accidentally left them on the counter. The girl who worked there, who looked to be about twelve years old, ran after us yelling, “Is these youins’es sodies.” My mother laughed till she hurt and encouraged my siblings and me to do likewise. We mocked the poor girl all the way back to Texas. I was nearly grown before I started to realize how stupid and cruel this was.

My dad himself, along with his older brother, escaped Ozarkia when they very young, joined the air force, went to college, and eventually retired as generals. My brother “Judas” (who takes after my mom’s family) is the only one of my dad’s five sons who was not a field grade officer. Indeed, three of us have doctorates. Despite their pretenses and belonging to a very prominent Texas clan, none of my mom’s siblings or nieces and nephews ever earned a post-graduate degree, or held commissioned rank (indeed none of them ever served), or made it past the service manager stage.

Not all rednecks are created equal, I guess.