LAVA SOAP

A comedian named Jeff Foxworthy made a gozillion bucks with jokes about rednecks. His jokes started out with, "You might be a redneck if..........".

I doubt it will net me a gozillion, but it occurs to me that the same logic might apply to my home town. Here goes.


You might be from Wright City if:

You have turned off the light in your living room by holding the electricity wire and receptacle hanging from the ceiling and twisting the bulb.

You can sit inside your house and see outside by looking between the wall boards.

Every time rain causes the roof to leak, you nail on a patch of different color roll roofing.

You have not painted the outside of your house for 30 years.

Your hot water heater sits exposed between the commode and the bathtub in your bathroom.

You have never locked your house in your life because there is nothing in it worth stealing.

You are too poor to own chickens.

The only rooms in the house that are heated are the living room and bathroom.

You put an old upright piano in your living room and the legs break thru the wooden floor.

A window next to your bed breaks during winter and it is repaired by stuffing an old sheet in it.

There is only one small closet in your entire house.

Your bath towels come from an oil field rag box.

Your dish washing cloths are oil field "red" rags.

Until you are in high school, all of your shirts and boxer shorts are made by your mother from chicken feed sacks.

You get only one pair of new shoes per year.

Your bath soap includes a brand called Lava.

You have eaten beans and taters every meal for several weeks in a row.

You have eaten fried spam or salt pork.

You drink iced tea from a peach or coffee can.

You burn your household trash in a 55 gallon metal drum in the back yard.

You periodically intentionally get fired from your job in order to draw unemployment checks.

In your entire childhood you never visit a doctor, not even once.

You have completely overhauled an automatic transmission on your dining room table while drinking catalpa wine.

You have had 5-10 vehicles repossessed due to nonpayment.

You repair your own flat tires.

You have put tires on your car that you found in a trash dump.

You know what recap tires are.

You have never had vehicle insurance in your life.

You have driven more years without a driver license than with one.

You have more drunk driving arrests than most people have speeding tickets.

You have regularly visited a bootlegger.

You don't have any of your original teeth left in your mouth.

You have bought groceries on credit for multiple years in a row.


I could go on for a couple hundred more "You might be from Wright City if..." lines since all of the above pertain to my family, but you get the idea.

Don't get me wrong, we didn't have such a bad life in WC. It was just "memorable".

It also taught us not to judge folks by their relatives and that the world is a simpler place if you plow around the stumps.