Flashback Time: Remembering Redneck Economics

The other day a friend of mine told me how to catch a gopher. At first I was perplexed.

"Why do you want to catch a gopher?" I asked.

"To eat him!" was the matter of fact reply with an implied "Duh!" for punctuation.

"Oh!" I answered, and a light went on in my head.

Gophers are made of meat. Gophers are made of free meat. Gophers are free range, antibiotic free and pretty much organic. They apparently taste like chicken. Did I mention that they were free? My interest was piqued. There are only a few problems I could see.

1. I've never caught a gopher.


2. I don't know where any gopher holes are.


3. I'm not sure I really know what a gopher looks like.


4. I'm not sure I could really drag a fuzzy little creature out of a hole with a broom handle, nails and can contraption, look in his soft little eyes and then bean him (even if he is made of free meat).

Suddenly I realized my limitations as a child of the suburban middle class. While I was wasting my teen years gawking at A Clockwork Orange and David Bowie, my redneck counterparts were learning useful skills like automotive repair and gopher catching.


When the economy starts sliding and push comes to shove, what skill have I got? I know how to apply eye liner like Robert Smith. What about my redneck brethren? He's smacking down gopher soup that he caught last night with a Busch Lite can.


The heat is on in our country and suddenly The Great Depression doesn't look so much like ancient history. The rich are insulated with a fat pad of wealth and the brains to keep it. The poor were already in the middle of a fight to survive. It's the middle class that gets the brunt of the shock wave.


In my two car, two and a half bath world it's a nasty surprise to look around and think "What do you mean, I can't afford milk?" It doesn't compute to the Liz Claiborne and Areopostale set. It's taking some of us a moment to let the new reality sink in. Driving and food are expensive. Computers and cars don't really need to be upgraded every year. No, we can't move up into a better neighborhood in the next six months.


My gophers-as-food conversation brought to my attention, however, that there is a valuable subculture among us that can help us all, if we can keep from turning our noses up. Like the Indians showed the early pilgrims how to hunt and grow corn, our twangy accented neighbors suddenly seem invaluable for their do-it-yourselfer ways.


A few days later I had another short conversation that made me re-evaluate our nations middle class values. At the school where I work I was urging children to look through the heaps of lost & found items that had gathered on the cafeteria stage before they were donated to charity.


"Make sure you look for any lost items!" I reminded an Abercrombie & Fitch clad mini fashionista as she cruised by without a glance. She waved a rhinestone covered hand dismissively in my direction.


"My mom never wants me to bring back items if they have been in the lost & found." she declared with a sniff. "They might have cooties."

Amazed, I thought "Good for her!"

One of these days her mom will look around and realize that her credit's run up and American Express is no longer her friend. In the meantime, I'll take her $75 cast off pullover home with me. I have an old fashioned machine called a 'warsher' that kills cooties, and I need something to wear while sitting around the fire pit enjoying my Fuzzy Catch of the Day Fricassee.'

Note from Penny Pinscher: Originally posted on January 23rd, Redneck Economics has been one of the most popular posts ever to appear on this blog. Besides making numerous networld appearances and being forwarded into inboxes everywhere, the opening lines of Redneck Economics were selected as Wisebread's Quote of the Week. We hope you enjoy this flashback!

More Redneck Economics: Investing In Precious Metals

Read the first Redneck Economics here!

Chickens don't eat much, but as my financial belt tightens every little expense is under scrutiny, including my chicken feed. In my backyard wait 10 hungry beaks. In exchange for my leftovers and some Egg Maker Pellets, my little cluckers give me the best, free range eggs I've ever had.

I just have to keep the food coming, which costs around $18 a month. With egg prices hovering around $2.50 a dozen here in the Guld Coast, that's a good deal for eggs. My backyard fresh eggs cost me around .96 a dozen.

Still, $18 dollars is $18 dollars I don't want to spend if I can get around it, and the other day I found myself complaining about the situation with my redneck friend.

"Invest in precious metals." he sagely advised.

"Precious metals...?" I asked, seeking clarification.

"Yep," he replied. "Precious metals. What do you get when you find an old grill on the corner?"

"I don't know." I answered. "What do you get from it?"

"Aluminum. About $15 bucks worth." He raised his eyebrows knowingly and nodded.

"Your kidding me! An old grill has got that much aluminum in it? I see those all the time!"

My brain whirred as my mental calculators tried to recall where I had last seen one of these derelict cookers. He grinned, another nugget of wisdom passed on to his unenlightened friend.

I struggled to stay on the road as I drove home that day. My eyes were too busy roving to and fro, looking for cast off metal items. Down a side street I glimpsed a pile of twisted scrap gutters. "Ka-ching!" I crowed to the empty minivan, and I made a beeline for the heap.

After a quick check to see if anyone was looking my direction, I hurried out of the car and opened the hatch. In 30 seconds I had stuffed the ungainly pile in my backseat, slammed the door and jumped in, feeling oddly embarrassed and pleased both at the same time.

Too excited to wait, I made a run to the recyclers to see what my treasure was worth. A short while later found me $7.85 richer, just like that. Inspired, I made up my mind to keep my eyes peeled for 'precious metals' on the roadside and beyond.

I didn't have to wait long. My little pile of scrap metal grew at a healthy rate as I fed it a steady diet of empty cans, corner findings and my own cast offs. Neighbors gladly saved their aluminum for me, after finding out I'd take it off their hands. Suddenly old cooking pots and ugly metal desks looked like piles of treasure glittering under a noon day sun.

The kids on the block got wind of my odd collection and humored me by leaving car flattened offerings on my porch. An old brass fireplace set that I couldn't give away at garage sales went into the pile. Finally, I was out of chicken feed, and it was time to see what my pile of junk was worth.

I was surprised to find myself one of many metal dealers that day. Everyone from suits and foremen to homeless were there with piles of scrap. A gruff and grimy worker directed me to back my van up to a scratched up dumpster type bin and toss in my findings. A forklift carried my bin to a scale big enough for a VW Bug to park on. Another employee sorted my treasures and called out to a cashier, who was taking my weights.

"Aluminum cast!" he shouted after tossing a pile of old cookware on. She tapped and nodded.

"Yellow brass!" heralded the fireplace tools being set alone on the scale. Tap and nod.

"Aluminum cans!" rang out as two large garbage bags hit the scale. He whipped out a magnet to check some more gutter pieces I found. They tested good and were tossed and weighed. Meanwhile, I waited on the sidelines, anxiously overseeing the translation of a month's worth of metal hunting into cash.

"Okay, Honey!" the cashier said, motioning to me. I approached as she dug change out of a cash drawer. Would this all be worth it or was this going to be more fodder for my husband's jokes?

The cashier handed me a small stack of bills and a few coins. "$27.03 for your metals. Sign here please." She motioned to a receipt on the counter. I grinned like a pirate with a treasure map and scribbled my name. I couldn't help noticing they paid me $6 for the fireplace tools I couldn't give away.

Elated, I bought my chicken feed with my essentially free money, and had enough left over to treat my daughter and I to a snack, buy a few staples from Walmart and have change left over to throw in my coin jar. Next time I saw my redneck friend I thanked him for his investment advice.

"That ain't nothin'," he said, taking a swig of Coke. "That's just common sense." I just smiled and eyed his soda can.

Urban Farming - Investing in Backyard Stocks

To live on a farm is to live in the country. You are either the town mouse or the country mouse. You have big city glamour or small town charm. To most people's minds, it's as simple as that, and there is nothing in between. They assume that if they haven't got a place with 40 acres then they must be 'city dwellers'.

Mention farming and folks get a bucolic image in their minds of sweeping fields of grain and fat, contented cattle. Chickens peck and scratch near the barn door as the sun sets behind rolling hills. Gardens bursting with greenery and ripe bounty lay like little quilts across the lawn as twilight whispers by with sleepy sweetness.

Now imagine a small piece of country in the middle of a city. The sounds of traffic are muted out by the soft clucking of hens. Emerald cabbages gleam brilliantly against a fence, causing the passing school children to wonder what on earth these strange plants could be. Fruit trees begin to bud out, promising fruits that will be taken to the beach and the library as snacks, both within a 10 minute drive.

This is urban farming, a third option in between the two extremes of rural and rat race. To me, it's having my cake and being able to eat it slowly, and with relish. I can get up in the morning and fetch my eggs for breakfast, still warm and as fresh and delicious as nature can provide. But if I run out of coffee I have the choice to stop at any of about 8 coffee house choices from trendy to mainstream, the best being PFIA in Niceville. On an urban farm, life is definitely good.

There are difficulties with a countrified city lifestyle. Zoning is one. I'm lucky enough to be considered "county", even though I live in a populated area. Another thing to consider is supplies. Livestock need more then a local pet center can usually provide. I have a feed store close by, the wonderful and infamous Sue's Country Corner, hemmed in with McDonald's, CVS and a car dealership in an eclectic mix of town and country.

The benefits outweigh any difficulties, however, and the opportunities are many. For example, there's a scrap metal dealer around the corner from where I get my hay and chicken feed. All month I save aluminum cans from where I work and around the neighborhood.

When food buying time rolls around I recycle my metals and use the proceeds as a 'discount' off the chicken food. Last month my recycling paid for the food completely, and I still had a few dollars left over! In the country I'd have to drive so far to get to everything the gas alone would negate any economic bonus.

I think of urban farming as a solution for many of the issues we face today. If everyone kept a few chickens in their yard, just think of all the resources we'd save in fuel for delivery, chemicals for packages, trees for paper cartons, waste disposal from large chicken farming... not to mention all the table scraps that wouldn't go to the landfill!

In today's Age of Turbulence, as Greenspan so aptly calls it, we need to think less like consumers and be more creative. Outside the box thinking can be the difference between an impoverished lifestyle and one that finds richness waiting beyond the horizon you only thought was there. Like Columbus, you too might discover that your world has no boundaries.

I prefer my backyard live'stocks & bonds' to any high pressured make it big or bust lifestyle. Take a look around and see if you can't find your perfect solution hidden somewhere in between the layers of what we think of as our limitations. You might just find the best of both worlds.

Redneck Economics

More Redneck Economics: Investing In Precious Metals

The other day a friend of mine told me how to catch a gopher. At first I was perplexed.

"Why do you want to catch a gopher?" I asked.
"To eat him!" was the matter of fact reply with an implied "Duh!" for punctuation.
"Oh!" I answered, and a light went on in my head.

Gophers are made of meat. Gophers are made of free meat. Gophers are free range, antibiotic free and pretty much organic. They apparently taste like chicken. Did I mention that they were free? My interest was piqued.

There are only a few problems I could see.

1. I've never caught a gopher.


2. I don't know where any gopher holes are.


3. I'm not sure I really know what a gopher looks like.


4. I'm not sure I could really drag a fuzzy little creature out of a hole with a broom handle, nails and can contraption, look in his soft little eyes and then bean him (even if he is made of free meat).

Suddenly I realized my limitations as a child of the suburban middle class. While I was wasting my teen years gawking at A Clockwork Orange and David Bowie, my redneck counterparts were learning useful skills like automotive repair and gopher catching.

When the economy starts sliding and push comes to shove, what skill have I got? I know how to apply eye liner like Robert Smith. What about my redneck brethren? He's smacking down gopher soup that he caught last night with a Busch Lite can.

The heat is on in our country and suddenly The Great Depression doesn't look so much like ancient history. The rich are insulated with a fat pad of wealth and the brains to keep it. The poor were already in the middle of a fight to survive. It's the middle class that gets the brunt of the shock wave.

In my two car, two and a half bath world it's a nasty surprise to look around and think "What do you mean, I can't afford milk?" It doesn't compute to the Liz Claiborne and Areopostale set. It's taking some of us a moment to let the new reality sink in. Driving and food are expensive. Computers and cars don't really need to be upgraded every year. No, we can't move up into a better neighborhood in the next six months.

My gophers-as-food conversation brought to my attention, however, that there is a valuable subculture among us that can help us all, if we can keep from turning our noses up. Like the Indians showed the early pilgrims how to hunt and grow corn, our twangy accented neighbors suddenly seem invaluable for their do-it-yourselfer ways.

A few days later I had another short conversation that made me re-evaluate our nations middle class values.

At the school where I work I was urging children to look through the heaps of lost & found items that had gathered on the cafeteria stage before they were donated to charity.

"Make sure you look for any lost items!" I reminded an Abercrombie & Fitch clad mini fashionista as she cruised by without a glance. She waved a rhinestone covered hand dismissively in my direction.

"My mom never wants me to bring back items if they have been in the lost & found." she declared with a sniff. "They might have cooties." Amazed, I thought "Good for her!"

One of these days her mom will look around and realize that her credit's run up and American Express is no longer her friend. In the meantime, I'll take her $75 cast off pullover home with me. I have an old fashioned machine called a 'warsher' that kills cooties, and I need something to wear while sitting around the fire pit enjoying my Fuzzy Catch of the Day Fricassee.