November 25, 2006

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My Father, The Redneck

My father is from Boston, and his parents are both Jewish. His mother left Belgium with her family in order to escape the Holocaust, and his father was of Sephardic descent. In fact, "Barzelay" is a very common name in Israel. His father, my grandather, was a die-hard Red Sox fan. Eventually, their family moved down to Daytona Beach, Florida, and my Dad really grew up there. Then my Dad went to Florida State University, and majored in Marketing and Business Administration. He ended up becoming an insurance salesman. So to review, he's a reasonably educated, white collar Northern Jew who grew up in a resort town (albeit, a cheap one). With that background, one wouldn't expect him to have all the habits of a redneck, but one would be wrong.

For starters, he loves fishing. We're not talking sport fishing in the sea for tarpon, or going on fly-fishing vacations to the Northwest. We're talking about bass fishing, worms as bait, on little lakes with Indian names like Istokpoga, Okeechobee (not a little lake), and Thonotosassa. So every weekend or two, he slathers the sunscreen all over himself at 3:00am, puts on a shirt with the collar ripped out, some silly hat with a mesh back, and makes sure he doesn't forget his pocket knife. Often he manages to drag my mother along with him. He gets the boat ready--the boat is named "Judy's Too," a joke on the fact that it is my mother's as well--and then he drives to some lake, hours away, to launch the boat as the sun rises. Morning is prime fishing time. And he fishes all day, then comes home.

Many weekend days while growing up, we'd all go out and greet my Dad after he came back from a long day in the sun, fishing in some tournament. He'd make my brother and I give him big hugs even though he was a pungent mix of sweaty body odor, sunscreen, and fish guts. Then he'd toss a couple bass in the sink and we'd watch while he cut open the stomach to show us what the fish had been eating, and then he'd cut off the head, and filet the fish for dinner. Then he'd shower while my mother cooked.

But fishing isn't his only redneck hobby. He also loves auto racing. And my father didn't get into NASCAR in the recent wave of popularity. He's been into it all my life. And he isn't interested in the personalities of the drivers, or anything like that. He's into the racing, and into the cars. He's interested in how they squeeze an extra few horsepower out of the cars by drilling holes in the carburetor, or how a driver uses the air currents and low pressure zone created by the car ahead of him to pull him along and save a gallon of gas over fifty laps. And he isn't just into NASCAR. He's into drag racing, and Formula-1, Busch Series and whatever Winston Cup is called. He even watches swamp buggy races.

If he's watching television, he's watching SPEED Network. My brother and I wanted digital cable for years, but it cost extra, so we didn't get it. Then SPEED Network came out, and it was only available on digital cable. My father ordered it immediately.

He actually raced cars when he was younger. He started the auto racing club at FSU, and the extra space in our garage is filled with trophies. Smattered around are plaques etched with checkered flags, tires, and sports cars, trophies with leaping bass or an angler rendered in faux gold, and other proud mementos of redneck success; a rusty old lawnmower that he keeps running, a box full of metal scraps or random sections of various tubings or hacked up pieces of plywood and two-by-fours (all just in case they're needed). And sure enough, if something breaks, he goes out to the garage, and we hear the metallic clink of hammering, and the grating whir of power tools. Eventually he comes back inside and it's fixed.

His fishing buddies have managed even to alter his speech. My father who used to correct me every time I said "Me and my friends," or "I'm doing good," now has the vocabulary and grammar of a yokel. He still doesn't have a Southern accent.

And so my father has turned out, against all odds, to be a redneck. Even despite all the other evidence, fishing and tons of yard work literally have given him a red neck. And every night when he's out in the garage painting his custom lures, oiling his reels, and tweaking his boat's propeller, it just makes me wonder how the hell it happened. In the ultimate illustration of his paradox, he even scouts out fishing reports for the lakes online. He's a thoroughly modern, intelligent, and yet hopelessly redneck man.

Posted at November 25, 2006 12:21 AM | Comments (5)

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