Something about getting muddy was beautiful to me. I remember after a day of mudhogging during high school, the entire front half of my buddy Scott's truck was caked in mud. I'm getting a little teary-eyed just thinking of it.
I can't recall the last time I got so down and dirty. I've become a bit of a neat freak since I got married and had kids. I wigged out the other day when my dog got his muddy paws on me (hey, I'd just put them on and was fixing to go to work). I find myself telling my kids to stay away from mud puddles. I'm an almost obsessive hand-washer (always have been, though).
I've wondered what's gone wrong with me. I feel like I'm collecting dust (but if you threw some water on me …). I'm going to assume this has some deeper meaning, so bear with me.
We've become a society where Hummers, the best off-road vehicles ever made, are driven by soccer moms and other people who don't know what mudhogging is. A clean Hummer is an abomination, right up there with sweet cornbread and the DH.
We don't like to get our hands dirty, do we? We miss out on a lot of fun, and on chances to help others. I admit to also being guilty of avoiding figurative filthiness, like trying to help a person through a big problem.
Being a Southerner, one whose ancestors always had dirt or mud under their fingernails, I feel a measure of shame about this. Southerners aren't supposed to be afraid of getting dirty, literally or figuratively. Shoot, my dad once ate dirt off a car bumper when he was little (which explains a lot).
I'm not sure how to remedy my problem. I can't go mudhogging in our minivan or Honda. I don't have time – or enough friends – for a good game of mud football. I work at a newspaper, so the only time I get muddy on the job is when I'm interviewing a football coach on a rainy Friday night.
I'm all clean on the outside, but my avoidance of mud makes me feel a little dirty on the inside.
Today's Redneck Thought: "You got to get a little mud on the tires." – Brad Paisley, Mud on the Tires
4 comments:
Remember that time I got my Ranger stuck? We had to dig it out with shovels because nobody had a 4-wheel drive with a winch.
Yeah, you had that Ranger almost on its side. Didn't we have to get "Pete" Hancock to come give us a ride into town or something? I'm trying to remember exactly where that place was, because it had a lot of good mud.
Boo . . . sweet cornbread may not be Southern (or how my MawMaw made it), but I can't help but love it.
As for the mud, I was just telling Ben the other day that I can't wait for him to get old enough for us to get outside and get dirty. I have great memories of playing in the mud. Then being sprayed off with the waterhose and being made to strip on the porch before coming inside. I probably also got whipped for getting muddy, but it was worth it since I remember the mud but not the whipping.
That was up North of Ruston almost to Dubach. I forget what that place was called...it might come to me. There were a bunch of pipelines and stuff up there. Nah...Pete didn't take us anywhere. We all crammed in your Toyota and went looking for somebody with a winch.
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