Simple Truths and Discoveries

Even my dear mother still calls it a trailer! And most people now call it an RV. We like the term Motor Coach. Somehow it has a nicer ring and conjures up something on the vehicular evolution scale above Neanderthal. Besides which, my greatest fear in life (one of them anyway) is that I will fall on hard times and be forced to live in a real trailer park somewhere in the Midwest where there's no ocean and tornadoes roll through every evening just to test if you are still alive or not. Now please don't get me wrong, I have nothing at all against people who do live in those parks. After all, it really is only a partial generation removed from what we are doing and how we do live. No talk of "trailer trash" from me; although there are those who think anyone living the transient life in whatever type of vehicle is that or worse. Are we gypsies not to be trusted near their valuables? Are we some brand of homeless with a shell, a traveling tortoise of sorts? Who knows what all those not living la vida loca of trailerdom think of those of us who are....

Well all this is a round about method of seg-waying into what I wanted to talk about today: the original and sometimes hurtful talk of the redneck lifestyle. Oh it's all meant in fun (I think) and I admit I engage in it myself. I have for years now worn a t-shirt that jokes about what a redneck would do if a redneck were to go boating; hence the birth of the now popular, if not famous, image of The Redneck Yacht Club.

Little did I realize though, and were it not for the lifestyle and the constant travel would I ever have learned, that there is Truth with a capital T to the image in the shirt and thereby I suppose also to the actual life style. It's hard to explain. Maybe impossible. But since seeing is believing, all you need do is study the photos provided here. Remember you can click on them to blow them up if you can't see detail, and just back arrow to return to the blog. This is no trick or illusion, no computer animation tricks involved like they used in Avatar. Nope. Just the image as it is. First the shirt. Then the real deal! Not the Yacht, the waterfront home...


While you are duly amazed, let's move on to another little known point of interest. Remember the band big in the 90's called Hootie and The Blowfish. Well, I have figured out how they got their rather creative rock band name. Like many a wild idea that came about with a bunch of college types sitting around sipping a brewsky, I now theorize (and it simply MUST be true) that several guys from the band took a few beers in the cooler and went fishing in the Florida Keys and caught a Southern Blowfish in the same manner as I did while out in the boat with George and Gerry and John up at Fiesta Key. It was a bit of a windy day again and the bite was slow as they say on board. But managed to catch a blowfish I did. No. I didn't hook him in his parrot like mouth. Seems I snagged his posterior, right next to the buttissimus maximus. When I hauled his a__ out of the water, he proceeded to puff himself up like a balloon. Ouch! So it immediately dawned on me, if you catch this type of fish by his hootie, he blows himself right up. And that, I presume, is the story of how Hootie and The Blowfish got their name. No offense intended.


And finally for this post, since I have asked you to "absorb" some rather vague and far-fetched concepts, I will close with what we found in a shallow bay on one of our kayaking outings with Bob and Susan- a rather substantial field of natural sea sponges growing happily in the waters of the Florida Keys.