Redneck Stories (Vol. II)
After she retired from her full time job, my mom worked part-time at a place called “Charlotte’s Saddlery.” This wasn’t so much a money making endeavor as a “cost-offsetting” endeavor. I’m pretty sure she brought home her paychecks in the form of discounted equestrian apparel and accessories.
One day, I’m at my parents house and I see this rusty metal chicken. I know, a shocking number of my stories involve chickens of some ilk. I remarked that I thought it was cool and asked my mom where she’d gotten it. She told me she had found it in “Charlotte’s trash” and I could have it if I wanted it.
I am a hoardy little trash goblin who loves to make discarded items “beautiful again” so of course I accepted the offer of the rusty metal chicken. In my mind, the chicken was beautiful just as it was, so I lined the bottom of the chicken and decided I’d put a plant in it. Which I did. I displayed it proudly on my front porch and showed my mom.
Mom, “Charlotte is going to know we go through her trash now!”
“I’m sorry, what? I thought you got this from work!”
Mom, “No, I got it from our neighbor Charlotte’s trash.”
Our neighbor whose front porch faced mine with a direct line of sight. That’s how a miscommunication led to our rich neighbors knowing we go through their trash.
And that is definitely not the only yard art I’ve pilfered from the neighbor’s trash, but I do put it on the back porch so as not to look like the dumpster diving garbage goblin that I am.
Many moons ago, I used to work for Farm Bureau insurance. This was 2009-ish to the best of my recollection, so it certainly wasn’t the stone age. For some concrete reference, I spent my downtime on the website StumbleUpon and Pinterest had just become a thing.
The computer system I was working with however, was an MS-DOS program where you could not use a mouse for navigation at all-you had to use the arrow keys. There was a big outlet in the center of the office floor where, just a year prior, all of the computers had to be connected to that central plug system.
I remember asking my boss at the time, a good family friend, why we were still using a computer program that looked like this in 2009.
No joke, it looked like this.
I had to memorize the command codes in order to generate an insurance quote for our customers.
One day, I asked my boss about this.
His response, “Courtney, what about the words ‘Farm’ and ‘Bureau’ indicate to you a high level of technological advancement?”
Fair point.
Anyway, part of my job at Farm Bureau was to go out and photograph whatever it was that we were insuring. It was usually houses, but sometimes it was farm equipment; once it was a decommissioned military tank because rich people have weird hobbies.
One day, I had to drive out to this guy’s land and take pictures of a backhoe (or something, idk it’s been a minute since 2009) that was just sitting out in a field. He gave me explicit instructions about where the equipment was located, but I have the directional sense of a potato so I was driving my little Chevy Malibu around this guy’s farm for a while before I found the backhoe.
I had to park my car on what passed for a road and walk through a hay field to get close enough to take pictures of the equipment. So I get out, take my photos and start walking back to my car when I realize I’m being followed…by a herd of longhorn cattle.
Now granted, they’re following pretty slowly, but when you have a herd of these dudes stalking you, it’s pretty terrifying.
I tried to make a hasty getaway, but I was wearing the wrong shoes for an efficient escape. It was summer in Texas and I was wearing a pair of dainty (and in retrospect) dumbass sandals. As I was making my calculated escape, one of my sandaled feet sank deeply into the viscous mud underneath me. I pulled my foot out of the mud…but the mud held fast to my tiny sandal. I bent over and yanked my sandal out of the mud while being pursued by a terrifying herd of horned beasts. I hobbled, terrified, to my car-one bare foot and one inappropriately sandaled one. The herd gained ground, moving threateningly closer and I leapt into my little car and slammed the door.
Through the window, I could see the angry faces of the malicious and terrifying beasts I had just managed to outrun.
Imagine this thing staring you in the face.
I was pretty sure that, despite the best efforts of my formidable enemy, that I could make a clean getaway in my mid-sized sedan. And get away I did.
The next day, I was talking to the property owner on the phone.
“That was harrowing! Your cattle aggressively pursued me until I left the property! I didn’t know you could buy guard cows.”
Owner, laughing, “You were scared of them?”
Me, defensive, “They were chasing me!”
Owner, “I’m so sorry. I should have warned you. I hand-feed them all treats every time I’m there.”
What I thought were ferocious beasts intent on my demise were basically just overgrown puppies who assumed I had snacks.
For reasons I cannot even begin to analyze, I am terrified of frogs. They are disgusting and I hate them and you can argue that they’re cute and harmless all you want. I’m not having it.
I’m not as bothered by toads, but they’re definitely in the frog family. Toads don’t have the range of motion that tree frogs do; tree frogs, on the other hand, can leap onto you from anywhere and potentially touch you with their grotesque sticky feet.
I am a relatively self-sufficient, independent woman and I lived by myself for about ten years. I can deal with most things. During that time, I once called my dad, made him walk over to my house and asked him to remove a small tree frog that was sitting menacingly in my sink. That’s how much I despise them; I am more than willing to inconvenience others to avoid dealing with frogs.
When my parents first bought their house in the country, I psyched that it had a pool. While we were still remodeling and had not yet moved in, I went with my dad to work on the house. I swam while he did whatever it was that he was doing. I was swimming and lounging around on a pool float, reading my newest copy of YM magazine and imagining I was a rich kid and not one whose parents had just bought a derelict property in the middle of nowhere. I was alone in the pool, floating motionlessly when I heard an enormous splash.
I immediately panicked and began looking under the water for the source of the noise. That’s when I saw it-the biggest bullfrog I had ever laid eyes on was swimming toward me with what can only be described as a look of murder in its weird eyes. Ok, the murder part might be an exaggeration, but the size description is not an embellishment. It was about the size of a bowling ball.
I flew out of the pool in a frenzy to find my dad standing on the deck, laughing hysterically. He had come across this absolute unit of a bullfrog, picked it up (with his bare hands, gross) and thrown it into the pool with me.
In case you’ve never seen one of these monsters
“Ha ha. Get it out,” I said.
My dad went and got one of his big fishing nets and attempted to fish the frog out of the pool. But here’s the thing, frogs are surprisingly fast. I just Googled it; they can swim two feet PER SECOND…which is a hell of a lot faster than my dad could go with the net. My dad is absolutely struggling and making zero progress in his attempt at frog removal.
“Are you proud of yourself?” I asked.
“Yeah, this was a mistake,” he said as I grabbed my towel, walked inside and left him to deal with the consequences of his ill-conceived prank.
