Marlboro
I just love rednecks. It's a good thing, too, because they're everywhere. In all my dealings with them, I have to say they have a culture and code of honor all their own. They are proud, rowdy, simple, and downright confusing.
It never ceases to amaze me how the smallest things in life can ‘do it' for these folks. Take your Sonic Route 44 sweet tea with lemon; that's the best bargain since BP's 3/1.00 hotdogs. There's nothing better to a redneck than a lazy afternoon with sweet tea, hotdogs, and NASCAR.
Just why are rednecks such NASCAR enthusiasts anyway? It's not just the men who are enthralled with it, either. I have two redneck sisters who won't leave the house on Sunday until the race is over. One roots for Jeff Gordon, the other for Tony Stewart. The sad part is they've brainwashed my nieces and nephews, and now they're little redneck NASCAR fans, too. Will the madness never cease?
Small things we wouldn't pay attention to really make a redneck's day. Give them a bowl of beans with a slice of tomato on the side for supper and a cold beer for dessert – and they're happy. The dogs brawling over a ham bone in the front yard really gets their blood pumping. The redneck women are happy with a bottle of Charley perfume, blue frosted eye shadow, and Friday nights at the karaoke bar. Redneck kids will do anything for a moon pie, Pepsi, and a trip to the carnival at the Big Lots parking lot.
Even though I don't understand rednecks, they sure come in handy as neighbors. They'll fix your broken truck, send you a meal if you're sick, and they'll even buy you something at the flea market on your birthday. More importantly, having a redneck neighbor can make you feel safe. If the sight of Billy Bob sitting on his porch cleaning his Smith & Wesson doesn't scare off an intruder, then all his dogs will.
Despite their all-around friendliness, there are a few things you have to watch out for if you have a redneck neighbor. First of all, men, don't ever look at their women-folk. They can take your simple “Howdy” and turn it into something you'd see on Jerry Springer. Don't make the mistake of removing the beer or RC cans from their yard for recycling; they can get mighty riled when they don't have anything for target practice. Lastly, don't ever underestimate their love of country music. They take it real personal if you knock Hank Jr., David Alan Coe, or Merle. Why, those men are as sacred to them as the Stars and Stripes, Mama, and the Bible.
I was born and bred in east Tennessee. Even though my son has a mullet, I smoke Marlboro reds, my husband has 32 wife-beaters, and my daughter knows every Tanya Tucker song by heart, I have never considered myself a redneck. You see, I drew the line a long time ago when I decided no more than five dogs in the house, no whoopin' the kids with my flip flop in front of the K-Mart, and absolutely no Spam on Easter.
Written by Dee Dee Nicolosi
Ayrton Senna On The Very Edge
Bereft of Honda power yet still supernaturally fast, Senna here is zooming for his record-breaking sixth and last win at the 1993 Monaco Grand Prix.
We may be able to see a beautiful integrity in the uncompromising and dauntingly competent stance of today’s cars, wide and low and sticky with rubber, clean and complex as a surgical theatre, a blare in the ears and a blur in the eyes and a fireproofed gauntlet flung in the face of relevance.
L. J. K. Setright’s words from his 2002 book Drive On!: A Social History of the Motor Car read as if written specifically to subtitle Senna’s driving.
The year is 1993, the season is still early, and after his win in Monaco, Senna would be leading his great rival Alain Prost in the championship. No longer teammates as during the tumultuous end of the 80s under Ron Dennis at McLaren, Prost would strike back with four wins in a row, enough to earn his fourth world title and deny Senna his.
The McLaren, armed with a Ford instead of a Honda in the rear, is a focused blur of Marlboro colors, taking a corner with no margin left to spare.
No wonder, as it was on this very circuit five years earlier that Ayrton Senna experienced and described the sensation of flow, that peculiar mental state where a person’s skills and challenges are in perfect harmony:
I was already on pole, then by half a second and then one second and I just kept going. Suddenly I was nearly two seconds faster than anybody else, including my team mate with the same car. And suddenly I realised that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a different dimension. It was like I was in a tunnel. Not only the tunnel under the hotel, but the whole circuit was a tunnel. I was just going and going, more and more and more and more. I was way over the limit, but still able to find even more.
Described by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, my fellow Hungarian with the rather impossible name, flow is a precarious state of mind, prone to disruption by self-awareness, and rather frightening to comprehend from any other state of mind, as Senna himself learned during his pole run in Monaco:
Then suddenly something just kicked me. I kind of woke up and realised that I was in a different atmosphere than you normally are. My immediate reaction was to back off, slow down. I drove slowly back to the pits and I didn’t want to go out any more that day. It frightened me because I was well beyond my conscious understanding. It happens rarely but I keep these experiences very much alive inside me because it is something that is important for self-preservation.
Self-preservation would elude him. At the much-maligned 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, 343 days after his last win in Monaco, Ayrton Senna crashed into a concrete wall and died.
Photo Credit: Pascal Rondeau/Allsport
Send an email to Peter Orosz, the author of this post, at peter@jalopnik.com.
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