O/T: RURAL INDIANA RULES

[Lew Hodgett]

I can think of a few other states where this would apply.

Enjoy

Lew

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THE RULES OF RURAL INDIANA ARE AS FOLLOWS:

Listen up City Slickers!

1. Pull your droopy pants up. You look like an idiot.

1. Turn your cap right, your head isn't crooked.

2. Let's get this straight; it's called a 'dirt road.'

I drive a pickup truck because I want to.

No matter how slow you drive, you're going to get dust on your Lexus.

Drive it or get out of the way.

1. They are cattle. They are live steaks.

That's why they smell funny to you.

But they smell like money to us.

Get over it. Don't like it?

I-70 goes east-west, I-65 goes north-south.

Pick one.

1. So you have a ,000 car.

We're unimpressed.

We have $150,000 corn pickers and hay balers that are driven only 3 weeks a year.

1. So every person in rural Indiana waves.

It's called being friendly.

Try to understand the concept.

1. If that cell phone rings while an 8-point buck and 3 does are coming in, we WILL shoot it out of your hand.

You better hope you don't have it up to your ear at the time.

1. Yeah, we eat taters and gravy, beans and cornbread.

You really want sushi and caviar?

It's available at Jim's bait shop.

1. The 'Opener' refers to the first day of deer season.

It's a religious holiday held the closest Saturday to the first of November.

1. We open doors for women.

That is applied to all women, regardless of age.

1. No, there's no 'vegetarian special' on the menu.

Order steak.

Or you can order the Chef's Salad and pick off the 2 pounds of ham and turkey.

1. When we fill out a table, there are three main dishes: meats, vegetables, and breads.

We use three spices: salt, pepper, and ketchup. Oh, yeah.... We don't care what you folks in Cincinnati call that stuff you eat...

IT AIN'T REAL CHILI!!

1. You bring 'coke' into my house, it better be brown, wet and served over ice.

1. You bring 'Mary Jane' into my house, she better be cute, know how to shoot, drive a truck, and have long hair.

2. College and High School Football is as important here as the Pacers and the Colts and more fun to watch.

1. Yeah, we have golf courses. But don't hit the water hazards?

It spooks the fish.

1. Colleges? We have them all over. We have State Universities, Community Colleges, and Vo-techs.

They come outta there with an education plus a love for God and country, and they still wave at everybody when they come for the holidays.

1. We have a whole ton of folks in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines.

So don't mess with us.

If you do, you will get whipped by the best.

1. Turn down that blasted car stereo!

That thumpity-thump crap ain't music, anyway.

We don't want to hear it anymore than we want to see your boxers.

1. 4 inches of snow isn't a blizzard - it's a flurry.

Drive like you got some sense in it, and DON'T take all our bread, milk, and bleach from the grocery stores.

This ain't Alaska .

Worst case you may have to live a whole day without croissants.

The pickups with snow blades will have you out the next day.

[Markem]

Having grown up in suburban Chicago, now living in Southern Illinois could be well adapted to the kids who come to college from the big city. But only outside of Carbondale damn academics. :)

Mark (sixoneeight) = 618

[Charlie Self]

The three best. Most of the rest just sound like an unfriendly farmer, of which there are plenty.

I'm always amused by these lists that tell everyone how friendly the folks are while threatening to blow visitors' heads off or run them over.

[Tim W]

[..]

Yes. Friendly to your own kind and intolerant of anybody different. I have put Indiana on my list of places I never want to visit.

Tim w

[dpb]

Charlie Self wrote: ...

It's having the city slickers come out and dump their trash, drive through fences, shoot cattle for target practice, etc., that has much to do w/ us being that unfriendly... :(

--

[Upscale]

That would do it. Under those circumstances, I can't really blame you.

[John]

30 years of experience in Atlanta, has taught me that this also applies to the locals...

John

[jo4hn]

Up here in the boondocks, the most telling insult is "flatlander". Otherwise it's "you ain't from around here, are you?" and then everybody laughs. Phew, it's a fast paced life we lead.

boy howdy, jo4hn

[dpb]

...

Well, it is hardly "city" in the sense of what most consider a city, but they do come from within city limits to outside specifically to dump their trash, etc. There are only half a dozen other resident landowners within 5 miles and I know them all well enough that I know they're not the ones, so yes the offenders are what we call city people while perhaps still qualifying as "local".

The worst of the bad hunters do come from elsewhere for the most part. There are decent ones in there, too, of course, but the few taint the rest...

[Charlie Self]

Really? Not around here. Many of them were born unfriendly and grow into it. I've been in this county for more than 30 years, and have yet to see a "city slicker" drive through a fence, and the country types need no lessons on dumping trash or shooting cows. Hillbilly heaven is a place knee deep alongside every road with empty beer cans, booze bottles and McDonald's wrappers. It doesn't take a city slicker to do that, and few do.

[Charlie Self]

I got that here, too, some 31 years ago. My response: "Thank God." Astounding how that shuts the flappers up.

Actually, at one point, both my parents' families were from Virginia, but...Mom's family still is, Dad's is in Kentucky, and we were raised in NY (and on VA farms in summer).

[dpb]

Well, that's the exception here -- landowners here take pride in their places and almost all the trash along roadsides, etc., comes from outside parties, not the landowners.

They are "local" in the sense they live in the town, but they are charged for trash there or have to bag it, etc., so it's cheaper to find a roadside ditch.

Cattle-shooting seems to be a bored city teen phenomenon for the most part, w/ the occasional hunter w/ a high-powered rifle who (apparently) gets bored w/ pheasant.

This is, of course, quite low population density in rural areas in comparison to any area east of the Mississippi (or even in the eastern part of the state) so that makes a major difference.

I spent 30 yrs in E TN and SW Va and worked coal mine and prep plants doing service on coal analyzers which included S IN/IL fields as well so I do know what some of that country looks like. The "good" IN farm country other than it rains more and on average they're somewhat smaller tends to look much more like we think stuff should look here...

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[Charlie Self]

Unfortunately, rednecks are also landowners, and plentiful. That's where the trashing here comes from. They don't take pride in their own places and are perfectly willing to make others look as much like additions to the dump as theirs do.

But they are not city types, nor from outside. A few come from families that have been here since before the Revolution. Yes, some are teenagers, but I can't recall the last time we had a complaint about farm animals being shot. It does happen, but something on the order of biannually, which, given the hunters' deer kill of something close to 7,000 each year in this county, isn't all that bad.

I can't comment on Indiana, because my primarily familiarity comes from driving through Gary many years ago, which is not a truly enlightening experience.

[dpb]

Charlie Self wrote: ...

I feel your pain, then...those types are pretty rare here -- the rural places that are pig sty-like are generally renters or a couple or areas where there have been individual lots sold off. But, those folks are for the most part, at least, content to dump on themselves rather than others. The landowners in the County, even if they don't keep their places in picture-postcard shape at least don't dump on their neighbors.

Our problems do come from town and were _greatly_ exacerbated when they started pretty expensive (minimum $18) fees for the dump and stopped accepting household trash except for fee as well. Also used to take brush/tree trimmings free for their composter, but stopped that as well. So, now we get everything the cheapskates won't take to the dump.

Livestock problems tend to come in rashes of events, for some reason--it'll be quite a while, then somebody will report an incident and seems like then we'll have a whole bunch for a while. Seems to be a copy-cat syndrome in effect.