Redneck Nation

It’s July in Dublin, Georgia, but if you squint your eyes, it could easily be Mozambique or Katmandu or some other steamy, exotic locale. By late-morning, the air is thick, warm and damp as a newly soiled diaper. The sky swarms with hummingbird-sized mosquitoes and the trees buzz with the sound of locusts. Then, of course, there are the swamp leeches. I’m standing on the muddy banks of the Oconee River surrounded by camera crews from the Tonight Show, CMT, and a local news station out of Macon. We are watching with morbid fascination as Melvin Davis, a 68-year-old self-proclaimed redneck (the license plate on his monster truck says so), dunks his head into a barrel of murky river water. Finally, after a great deal of gasping and thrashing about, he proudly emerges with a gnarled pigs foot clenched between his brown, decaying teeth.

“I’m good at three things,” says Davis, choking up pints of stagnant water. “Lyin’, chasin’ women, and fetchin’ these pigs feet.” He tosses the hoof aside, then dunks under for another go ’round. Davis is demonstrating the fine art of pigs feet bobbing, one of the key events at tomorrow’s 10th annual Summer Redneck Games, the backwoods parody of the Olympics that draws thousands of fans to this remote region every year.

Since the end of the Civil War, rednecks have been characterized as conservative, working-class Southern whites with a rebellious nature and a near-fanatical sense of patriotism. But in recent years, there has been a renewed fascination with their throwback culture that extends well beyond the Mason-Dixon line. Thanks in large part to Jeff Foxworthy, the comedian who built an empire off “You Might Be a Redneck” jokes, his protégé Larry the Cable Guy, and their wildly popular Blue Collar Comedy Tour and TV show, the redneck phenomenon has achieved mainstream, international appeal. Last year, Gretchen Wilson’s “Redneck Woman” ruled the country and pop charts and nabbed a Grammy, and barefoot Southern rocker Bo Bice nearly became our American Idol. The new Dukes of Hazzard movie crushed its summer box office competition, while NASCAR continues to deliver blockbuster ratings across the nation (this year’s Daytona 500 was watched by more one million people in Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan alone). Mix in some Skoal Bandits, a John Deere trucker’s hat, and a pair of Confederate flag underpants, and you’ve got the makings of a full-fledged redneck revolution.

Dublin is a quaint, postcard-pretty village nestled halfway between Macon and Savannah, and on my first afternoon in town, I dropped into local radio station WQXY to meet with program director and Redneck Games founder “Mad” Mac Davis. Davis is a menacing wall of granite and muscle, with a head shaved bald and a sinister-looking goatee. He extends his cartoonishly large hand, and begins to inform me about the origin of the Games.

“Back in ’96 when the Olympics were about to happen in Atlanta, a lot of people were saying that we were just a bunch Southern hillbillies who couldn’t pull it off,” says Davis. “So I said, ‘If that’s what they think, let’s give it to ’em.’”

Davis and then-program director “Big Charlie” concocted an Olympic-style festival that would play upon redneck stereotypes. “We expected 500 people to show up, and instead we got 5,000,” says Davis, as he unconsciously wrings his big ham fists. “After the first year, I started seeing families coming from all over the country. They’d plan their vacations around this weekend, and it amazes me, because it ain’t Disney. It ain’t Six Flags. It’s the Redneck Games.”
In the first nine years of the Games, more than 95,0000 people have attended, and media from countries including Holland, Chile, and Australia have covered the event. Perhaps more importantly, the Redneck Games have brought much-needed revenue into an economically devastated community where 23 percent of Dubliners exist below the poverty level, more than double the national average. “These Games bring a lot of money to the businesses in Dublin,” says Davis. “Especially the convenience stores where they sell ice and beer. That’s money this town never would’ve seen.”

Towards the end of our conversation, I notice a gaudy, bejeweled championship belt hanging in a glass case on the other side of the room. When I ask Davis about it, he tells me that in addition to his duties at the country music station and managing the Redneck Games, he is a professional wrestling champion with the fledgling Georgia Independent Wrestling Alliance. He invites me to “Redneck Rampage,” a popular wrestling event happening later tonight at the Farm Bureau. It’s the official kick-off to tomorrow’s Redneck Games, and one of the city’s most anticipated entertainment events. I’m initially ambivalent about going, but when Davis tells me that grown men will climb into a steel cage and beat each other with folding chairs, I have a change of heart.
With the Games less than 24 hours away, it becomes apparent that I need a crash-course in redneck culture after I attempt to order a chai soy latte from the diner near my hotel (the nearest Starbucks is 90 miles away). “You want a Chachi who?” says the pubescent waitress, snapping her gum. I decide to seek some guidance from the Godfather of all rednecks, Jeff Foxworthy. Unfortunately, Foxworthy declined my request for an interview because of a long-standing feud with the founders of the Redneck Games. When I ask Jeff Kidd, the events coordinator of the Games, about the origin of the dispute, he tells me they’ve invited Foxworthy for a number of years and he always refuses to attend. “He’s just a prude little rich boy from Atlanta,” chides Kidd.

Instead, I dial-up redneck expert Ben Jones, who played “Cooter” on the original Dukes of Hazzard TV series. Today, Jones is the proprietor of Cooter’s Place, a museum in Gatlinburg, Tennessee featuring memorabilia from the show (including pants worn by Catherine Bach). “The redneck movement is a return to the pioneer spirit of America,” says Jones. “There’s not much difference between the Duke boys and Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. It’s the same American mythology, and those are the ideals America was founded on. Even if you’re a dusty old cowboy, you can still live your life how you choose.”

Jeff Kidd adds, “We’re down-home people, but we’re not backwards hillbillies. It’s a return to simple values that people are looking for in this day and age. And that’s what being a redneck is all about.”

But even within a culture boasting simple values, there are layers of complexity. Diana Itson, who owns a consignment shop in nearby Cochran, Georgia, explains the caste system that exists within the redneck universe. “There’s different degrees of rednecks,” says Itson. “There’s town rednecks who wear rebel flag T-shirts and listen to Charlie Daniels on the 8-track. And then there’s county rednecks like us, who get out there and have grill-outs and porch parties with the neighbors. Then there’s dirt-road rednecks. Them folks don’t take a bath for a week and they never wear shoes. Most of them live off the land. And they got four teeth, and two of them’s in their pocket.” She pauses to light up a menthol cigarette, taking a deep drag. “There’s poseur rednecks, too. You can spot ’em because they don’t know how to ride a four-wheeler or shoot a gun.”

It’s dusk, and I’ve made my way across town to the Farm Bureau for the big Redneck Rampage wrestling event. About three hundred diehard fans are in line, mostly families with young children. As we enter the cinderblock building that resembles a grade-school gymnasium, Rowdy Thigpen, a friendly fireplug of a man, explains that the venue is normally used for castrating sheep and hog auctions. At the center of the room is a tattered ring where strips of duct tape conceal rips in the Nixon-era canvas.

The low-budget event has the aura of a high school production, and the acting makes Hulk Hogan look like Olivier in Othello. In most cases, these wrestlers have regular jobs outside of the ring to pay the bills. By day, they might work at the mill or pour concrete for the county. But at night, when that bell rings, these blue-collar men become superstars with names like Loco Motive, Sugar Daddy Osborne, and Velvet Jones (who is the only black wrestler on the card and dresses like a pimp). For a brief, shimmering moment they experience the adulation and recognition that escapes their daily lives. It’s like karaoke, but with groin smashing.

The highlight of the evening is the steel cage match, where a bevy of wrestlers, including “Mad” Mac Davis, enter the cage (really just a heavy chain-link fence surrounding the ring) and proceed to pummel each other with an assortment of chairs, garbage cans, and random pieces of lumber. The crowd is whipped into a Budweiser-induced, orgiastic frenzy. One woman, 60-ish, with brassy stained teeth and an impressive mullet that’s bleached white and feathered at the sides, unleashes a torrent of screams at a 500-pound spandex-clad wrestler called the Professor: “Get that sum bitch! Stomp his throat! Stomp it good!” Of course, professional wrestling matches are scripted and the blows are staged. Yet this crowd believes what they are watching is real because they want to believe it, the way one might believe in Santa Claus, leprechauns, or the musical talent of Mark McGrath. There is something beautifully simplistic and hopeful about a group of people giving themselves over to a common ideal, and I find myself cheering right alongside the frothing masses.

The next morning, I arrive at East Dublin’s Buckeye Park for the 10th annual Summer Redneck Games. The grounds are situated along the shore of the Oconee River and surrounded by dense swampland. The area is a breeding ground for mosquitoes, West Nile Virus, and wild carnivorous hogs, and locals tell me that the murky waters are teeming with alligators. In other words, it is an ideal location for a gathering of inebriated adults, their half-naked children, and the family pets. The crowd, which will swell to nearly 7,000 (down from previous years because of expected thundershowers), streams in on foot, by car, and by boat, with beer coolers and barbecue grills in tow. On the north side of the park is a large stage where most of the competitive events will take place. To the south, there are numerous food and merchandise vendors.

At noon, the crowd converges on the stage to witness the ceremonial lighting of the barbecue grill, signifying the start of the Games. A man named L-Bow, who is barefoot, clad in overalls, and missing all his teeth, carries the official redneck torch—a flaming Budweiser can on a stick—through the crowd where he is greeted like a celebrity. He leaps onto the stage, flames up the beer-can torch, and lights the enormous grill in mock Olympic fashion. The crowd roars, and the Games are under way.

Each year the Redneck Games has a special celebrity guest, and this year it’s Steve Schirripa, who plays Bobby “Bacala” Baccalieri on The Sopranos. This might seem like an odd choice—an Italian from Brooklyn—but he’s a good sport and participates in all the events, nearly winning the redneck horseshoe competition (tossing toilet seats onto a plunger). “Don't tell me I'm no redneck,” he yells to the crowd. And that’s part of this event’s appeal: anyone from anywhere can be a redneck, regardless of social or economic status.

“People love rednecks because it’s a natural way of life,” says Tracy Giddens of Cochran, Georgia. “You don’t have to comb your hair or dress a certain way. You can be retarded or deformed, and still be a cool redneck.” Sue Radcliff, who made the 1,500-mile trip from New York City, adds, “We’ve got rednecks in Manhattan too, you know. But we call them alcoholics.”

The competitive events at the Redneck Games are almost an afterthought, and though a few hundred people gather to watch bobbing for pigs feet champion Melvin Davis defend his title, most are simply content to be eating, drinking, and mingling with their brethren. The event that draws the biggest crowd is the mud-pit belly flop, where a parade of fantastically obese men and women hurl themselves into a vile ditch of stinking orange muck. Afterwards, I hit the concourse in search of lunch, because nothing whets an appetite like the combination of mud-caked cellulite, man-breasts and rippling back fat. The food vendors are hawking every kind of charred meat imaginable, including Polish, Italian and hickory-smoked sausages, deep fried pork rinds, cheese steaks, and alligator ka-bobs. Unfortunately, I do not eat meat, and soon realize that I’ve stumbled upon Dante’s 8th level of Vegetarian Hell. I settle for a bag of hot boiled peanuts and a deep-fried Twinkie, nutritious snacks that go down well in 110-degree heat. Additionally, there are only eight Porta Potties for the thousands in attendance, and the lines stretch back to the river. Many people venture into the swamp to relieve themselves. I consider this option, until a young boy emerges from the bog with several enormous leeches attached to his leg. His mother, who is simulataneously smoking and chewing tobacco, takes the lit cigarette from her mouth and proceeds to burn the engorged parasites off, one-by-one. “Quit squirming,” she tells the boy, squirting a bit of tobacco juice as she speaks. “This one’s dug in real good.”

I expected the Redneck Games to be a rowdy, drunken, bawdy affair but it’s remarkably family-friendly and wholesome. At one point, a belligerent man who repeatedly says “fuck” within earshot of a group of children gets hauled away by security. For cursing. At a redneck festival. Many families set up large, colorfully decorated tents to provide refuge from the sweltering heat. Paul Schneider from Tampa (who won the mud-pit belly flop contest), his gorgeous girlfriend Lucy, and their baby Nevaeh (heaven spelled backwards) invite me into their double-wide tent for beer and barbecue with the entire extended family. They are kind, funny, and generous, handing me one Budweiser after another from an oversized cooler. David Green, the elder statesmen of the clan, offers a frightening demonstration of his award-winning hog call. Though the deafening, high-pitched squeal conjures images of Ned Beatty and the hillbilly-rape scene in Deliverance, I am more concerned that it will attract bloodthirsty razorbacks from the swamp. Their cousin James Estes, a proud redneck from Wrightsville, Georgia, asks me if I’ve ever “met the Lord.” When I say no, he hands me an enormous jug of Lord Calvert’s Canadian Whiskey and invites me to join him for a shot. I am goaded into doing whiskey shots with each family member as my indoctrination into the fun-loving clan.

At its heart, the Redneck Games is really just a large county fair, but with a decidedly Confederate twist. And when I say Confederate, I mean white. In fact, it is difficult to find a single black person at the Redneck Games, which is disconcerting when you consider that Dublin is more than 50 percent African American. One look around, however, and it’s easy to understand the conspicuous lack of diversity. The merchandise booths offer a wide variety of racially-charged products. If you’ve ever wondered where you could purchase a rebel-flag speedo or a 16-inch hunting knife engraved with the words, “White is Right,” this is the place. One booth sells bumper stickers with slogans like, “If I’d known this is how it would turn out, I would’ve picked my own cotton.” It is these types of racist overtures that cast a pall on a seemingly good-natured event.

“Bein’ a redneck is not about hate,” implores Mandy Evans of Cochran, Georgia. “We just like to drink our Purple Panty Pull-downs (a concoction of vodka and Kool Aid) and have a good time.”
“It may seem like harmless fun, but an event like the Redneck Games has insidious undertones,” says Dr. Susan Glisson, a professor at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and Director of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation. “To promote an event that consciously or subconsciously excludes half of the community is inherently racist.”

The line between rednecks and racism is blurred even further by the Confederate stars-and-bars symbol that is synonymous with this culture. The Redneck Games is a vast sea of Confederate flags, proudly displayed on people’s hats, t-shirts, bikinis, beer cozies, and even baby diapers. The majority of Southerners will tell you that the rebel flag is a symbol of their history and nothing more.

“The Confederate flag is about heritage,” says Redneck World magazine founder Frank Fraser. “There are many great great grandfathers who died on those Civil War battlefields. The flag is a way of remembering them.” Ben “Cooter” Jones adds, “The Confederate symbol is the Christian cross of St. Andrew and not a symbol of slavery or hatred. You can’t expect us to lower our flags. I mean, the KKK wears white sheets, but it’s not like we’re gonna stop putting them on our beds.”

“The problem with the heritage-not-hate argument for the Confederate flag,” says Dr. Glisson, “Is that Southern blacks and whites have a shared, interdependent history. And if we’re not willing to include the interracial nature of our Southern heritage into the conception of who we are, racism will continue to exist.”

After searching the park for the better part of two hours, I locate the only two African Americans in the throng. Both are friendly women working at a Pizza Hut booth, and one of them, a 55 year-old grandmother named Marsha, speaks to me with a clarity I have yet to witness since my arrival in these parts. “Here in Dublin, things are polite between whites and blacks,” she says. “But it’s all on the surface. If you’re a black person in this town, you have your place and don’t you cross that line.” She pauses to serve a slice of pepperoni pizza, and continues. “Things go on here you wouldn’t believe. There are rich white people in this town who make black workers enter their homes through the back door, like it was the 1920’s. Through the back door.” She wipes her hands on her apron, scanning the white crowd.

“I’m old enough to remember when blacks weren’t allowed inside the same restaurants as whites. And this still exists today for a lot of black people.”

David, one of the few non-white business owners in Dublin, reiterated this point over breakfast this morning. “There’s only one bar in this town, and black folks know not to go in it. Everything is controlled here. Everybody knows where you can go and where you can’t. There are invisible walls all over this city.”

I ask Marsha if she feels nervous or uncomfortable about being one of the only black people at the Redneck Games. She stands up tall, and says in a loud, clear voice, “This is a public park, and my tax dollars pay for it. So I have a right to be here. My spirit is very strong. And when you’re standing with the truth, nothing can hurt you.”

Later, I ask Freddie Baugus, president of the East Dublin Lion’s Club—the main sponsor of the Redneck Games—what efforts, if any, are being made to increase diversity at the event. He tells me in a lazy, molasses drawl that the Games are open to everyone and that all races of people attend. Wink wink. When I tell him that I counted only two African Americans out of 7,000 attendees, he deflects the issue. “Look, this is about good people getting together to have a good time. Are we finished here?”

By mid-afternoon, the sky darkens as ominous black clouds roll in, unleashing a deluge of wind and rain. Thunder crackles and lightning streaks the salmon sky. People scatter for cover, many returning to their cars and heading home early. The organizers cancel the remaining events—the armpit serenade, hubcap hurl, and the butt-crack contest—to the dismay of hopeful participants. I huddle under the Pizza Hut booth for shelter, chatting with Marsha.

“You know, I volunteered to be here because I thought it was important,” she says. “I believe that by standing tall and proud, I am breaking down the racial barrier. And I will be here again next year and the year after, and I will tell more black people to come. You are going to see a variety of people here next year, and black people will be participating.”

We share a smile, basking in this moment of optimism. But as we’re exchanging contact information, two shirtless teenagers pass in front of us, wrestling over a half-empty beer bottle. One says to the other, “Gross, dude. Don’t nigger-lip the thing.” And I am suddenly jolted back to a world where African Americans aren’t welcome at the only bar in town, and black laborers are forced to enter white homes through the back door. I want to chase down the teens and make them choke on their thoughtless, hateful words. But instead, I do nothing, pretending not to hear the remark. The truth is, aside from my dietary considerations and my aversion to handguns, I may not be so different from these rednecks after all. I live in San Francisco, one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse cities in the world, but I don’t count a single black person among my friends. In fact, I don’t really know any black people at all. Though I’m not consciously part of the race problem in America, I’m certainly not part of the solution. I wish Marsha luck with her crusade, and then I turn and walk out into the fine, steady drizzle, where you can’t tell me from anyone else in the crowd.