Hillbilly vs Whitetrash

Have you ever seen the movie, A Christmas Story? If you have a television and TBS, there is a good chance that you have. One of the scenes in that movie stayed with me. It's when the narrator is describing the neighbors as hillbillies. I know it is played for laughs, but to some members of my family, it isn't so funny. You see, being southern, we have a different view of what a hillbilly is, and I think the confusion is when people think hillbilly means one thing, when the word you are looking for is whitetrash. I'll try to give a few examples. If on New Year's Eve, your Father goes outside at midnight and shoots his gun to usher in the New Year, you are in the Hillbilly column. If you spend part of the New Year's holiday listening to a cousin's wife laugh and brag about being so wasted the garbage was talking to her, you have crossed over to white trash. If you have to calm your Brother down who is upset because our Father has died, and he has lost his temper at everything and everyone, and shouted for them to leave, you are looking at a Hillbilly situation. If you have to call a Bail bond and set up bail because your stupid brother decided to drive thirty miles while he was drunk again, you are looking at white trash. If your Father gives you a novelty gift of a singing fish, you go in the hillbilly column. If your father makes a special trip every year so that he can give you a copy of Hustler (after reading it himself, of course) for your Birthday- march on into the white trash line. Are you irritated with a relative and say some ugly things about them in another room at the Christmas dinner? Hillbilly. Do you get into a screaming match with your daughter while everyone is trying to eat a Christmas meal? Whitetrash. Did you take your mistress to the family dinner while your wife was at home? Whitetrash. Have you taken your family to a funeral viewing and been in a hurry? May be a hillbilly, some people just hate funerals. Did you take your children and your mistress to the viewing ? Did you run into your wife's Aunt while you were there? You may be the King of White Trash. Where do you keep your crown? Do you see the differences? There are many more examples I could call on, but I am sure that you get the point. And do a lot of Hillbillies shop at Walmart? Most definitely. I can't think of anyone that doesn't like to save money. But do Whitetrash shop there? Oh boy, do they! You can't miss them, their children don't have shoes on their dirty feet, and there is a good chance that the baby is drinking coke out of a baby bottle. They may have left the mistress in the car while they take the children in, but people see, and my how they talk about it. But they still bring money, or food stamps, and that is all that Walmart is worried about. In the corporate world, you don't really worry about where the money is coming from, just that the money is brought. I don't have a problem with being a Hillbilly. My Dad was so very proud of it, he often described himself as one. But Whitetrash? That is the reason that you raise your children well, or try to, anyway. You try to teach your children the self-respect and sense of decency that they will need to be contributing members of society. You just hope that it sticks. I don't think anyone consciously means to be whitetrash. Maybe they just don't ever see another way to live. Maybe they take it to be normal because they don't know any other way. If I ever find out, there might be a Nobel Prize in it for me. I'll pass it on and you can thank me later. ps Happy Birthday, Keith!!