June 10, 2010
Hillbillys Ain’t Hicks
The vast majority of us are Missouri hillbillys with very few hicks, but living down the dogma of a backwoods, illiterate, inbred hick proves a chore unattainable by even the sacred saints, despicable desperados or vainest of virtuosos lucky enough to be born in the great state of Missouri. Yours truly, though none of the above, has given it one heck of a lifelong effort – in vain. Allow me to interpolate the terms, because there IS a difference in a “hick” and a Missouri “hillbilly.”
No doubt media stands as the biggest culprit in this long black veil of misconception, but the entire emo aura does exist, thus having an origin of some sort. Festering and growing like a grotesque, infected boil on a wino’s neck for the past two-hundred years, it haunts even the new millennium Missouri, Ozarkian hillbilly’s world-wide façade.
Obscure as those origins may be, several small clues (dropping from the holey pockets of American history and lore over the last couple centuries) probably create a fairly close to accurate depiction in the birthing of the terms hick and hillbilly. From the first documented definition of the term “Hill-Billie” in a New York Journal of 1900, “A Hill-Billie is a free and untrammeled white citizen of Alabama, who lives in the hills, has no means to speak of, dresses as he can, talks as he pleases, drinks whiskey when he gets it, and fires off his revolver as the fancy takes him.”*. Obvious to me this author spent their life sipping tea in a New York reading room and never set a foot on Alabama soil, or any other hillbilly terra firma, in their life. In 1900 America ANYONE outside the east-coast metropolises probably lived and behaved similar to this fellow’s description.
Gratis, modern day media “entertainment” usage – i.e., The Beverly Hillbillies – anyone from Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, the Carolinas, Virginia or West Virginia, is obliged to bare the moniker – whether they want to or not. Ironically, and oddly, Missouri has become media’s hub for these banjo playing jet-setters. Makes no matter if you were born and raised in a big city (K.C., or St. Louis); you are from Missouri, you are a hillbilly.
Documentation suggests Appalachian immigrants of eighteenth century Scotland actually coin the term in their Catholic support of James II, for the Protestant “King Billy” (William III) hill-folk backers. Those fortunate enough to make the big pond crossing to the new world, most likely brought the term, or a slang derivative, with them. Wikipedia.com suggests the following: “…it derives from the linkage of two older Scottish expressions, ‘hill-folk’ and ‘billie’ which was a synonym for ‘fellow’, similar to ‘guy’ or ‘bloke’.” Hmmm, maybe.
Perhaps originally an Appalachian expression, the word hillbilly now stands as standard nomenclature of anyone descending from one of the states mentioned above, and most likely, anyone south and west of Pittsburg clear to Topeka, or Southerners that sound like they have a mouth full of potatoes when they speak (bet that irritates Texans something fierce). The general concept of a hillbilly to most Yankees and west-coasters is that a cousin slept with his mother, who was his brother’s aunt, and born in a holler under a still. You go, Li’l Abner!
Example: Once, in the great state harboring the best of all men’s vices (California), yours truly makes it to the finals of a nine-ball tournament in beautiful, downtown Rancho Penasquitos. Naturally, I have on my bib-overalls, Red Wing boots and long-sleeve Henley t-shirt with my Cadillac sitting right outside the front door shining Missouri vanity plates: OZARKZZ. When the final match begins between me and a young, blonde surfer dude, the bar patrons are all about the table gaping at the old hillbilly that quietly and methodically destroyed all comers to get to their local best; surfer dude.
The championship match is a race to seven between the last two warriors standing. Surfer dude wins the lag and gets the first break. He makes zip and never shoots again. On my sixth consecutive rack run, the crowd reaches full tilt boogie frenzy. They all stand about oohing and awing as surfer dude grows more and more irate. Finally, when he consumes enough White Russians, he puffs his chest and tail feathers, proclaiming to his buddies, the crowd and especially this old hillbilly (hoping to rattle me), “Yo, dude, did you know all of us think you hicks back there in Missouri are f***ing your sister?”
His buds have a good giggle and all point my way in mockery. This old hillbilly calmly steps back from the table, holding the stick as a wizard might his staff and gently nods at surfer dude. Normally I don’t partake in fifth-grade social demographic slur matches, but he set himself up too well, and asks for it, so I respond, “Ain’t that funny the way the world is? See, back home we think y’all are out here f***ing your brother!”
The place falls apart. Surfer dude’s intoxicated mouth shut, I finish him off on the slate and the once cliquish crowd now accepts me as one of their own, bibs and all. Initially, however, I was simply a cast member from Deliverance.
That’s only one example of the myriad of clichés and misnomers hanging about the necks of Missouri’s, so called hillbillys like a scarlet letter. In a half-century of walking extensively about the face of the earth, this author has heard them all, documenting most. Interestingly, it’s usually only offensive jibes and uneducated opinions of Missourians getting voiced. What of honor, chivalry, morals, manners, compassion for man and beast, common sense or work ethic? Four continents, eight countries and forty-four other American states have yet to offer this pilgrim a Missouri equal in any of those social disciplines. “Show Me.”
Yes, there are some backwoods, negative-I.Q, sons of sisters in Missouri…just like every place else. But in this twenty-first century, most are that way by choice. The methamphetamine culture runs rampant in our fair state (second only to Washington according to DEA statistics), and the meth-heads, of their own volition, now thrive back in the hollers and caves to avoid the law, as well as social conformity. By definition, however, these mutants are not hillbillys, but hicks; “remote from big cities and regarded as lacking in sophistication.” ** Most hillbillys dwell in communities with craftsman style houses and use forks; hicks live in shacks and tin-can trailers, always wiping sticky fingers.
Most Missouri hillbillys, those I know anyway, simply prefer life at a slower, less congested pace and desire to raise their families in areas with less crime, better schools, smiling retail clerks and total strangers that wave at them through the windshield when they drive to town. Modern hillbillys live in nice new homes (as noted) in burgs, or restored rural farm houses with manicured lawns (even if no one sees them) and grow their own tomatoes.
Perhaps hillbillys originated in the Appalachians, or Scotland, or east coast newspapers, but Missouri hillbillys, particularly Ozarkians, have somehow morphed into the rest of the nation’s current idea of hill folks; that Deliverance cast previously mentioned. Thank you, Ned Beatty…and Buddy Ebsen…and big-city talking-heads.
Lake of the Ozarks, most probably the hillbilly capitol of the world, reigns as the top vacation spot in the Midwest, and boasts more condominiums per capita than Florida. Missouri number crunchers over in Jefferson City estimate that by 2012 the Lake Ozark area will be the third most populous region in Missouri (after St. Louis and Kansas City). Now, something pertaining to the hillbilly mystique must be acceptable to uplanders, as the numbers attest.
So the next time you snicker at Ma and Pa Kettle reruns, or drool at Stupifyin’ Jones in Li’l Abner; The Musical, and curse Jed Clampett for letting Milburn Drysdale walk all over him…remember this little article. Perhaps the next hillbilly you run in to won’t look so much like a hick.
Mark Twain, Missouri native (and my hero), made the following statement in a speech called, “Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims” in 1881. If a Missouri hillbilly hooked up with one of the Kennedy gals, this may very well be what you end up with: “I am a border ruffian from the State of Missouri. I am a Connecticut Yankee by adoption. In me you have Missouri morals, Connecticut culture; this, gentlemen, is the combination which makes the perfect man.”
Beside Twain, a number of other Missouri “hillbillys” have left an enduring and endearing mark on the arts, sciences and literature. Believe me, these folks represent the true nature of Missourians, Ozarkians, hillbillies far better than the trailer-trash anti-socials, or Hollywood hick stereo-types picking at that dern boil.
See y’all at the lake!
~Ozark
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Famous Missourians (not all true hillbillies, but nigh near)
Robert Altman, Burt Bacharach, Josephine Baker, Wallace Beery, William Bent, Robert Russell Bennett, Yogi Berra, Thomas Hart Benton, Bill Bradley, Omar Nelson Bradley, Grace Bumbry, William Burroughs, Sarah Caldwell, Martha Jane Canary (Calamity Jane), Dale Carnegie, George Washington Carver, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain), Walter Cronkite, Robert Cummings, Jane Darwell, Charles Stark Draper, Jeanne Eagels, T. S. Eliot, James Fergason, Eugene Field, Redd Foxx, James W. Fulbright, John Goodman, Betty Grable, Dick Gregory, Jean Harlow, Edwin Hubble, Jack S. Kilby, James Langston Hughes, William Lear, Rush Limbaugh, John Huston, Jesse James, Bernarr MacFadden, Mary Margaret McBride, Robert D. Maurer, Marianne Moore, Geraldine Page, James C. Penney, Marlin Perkins, John J. Pershing, Vincent Price, Ginger Rogers, Charles M. Russell, Nellie Tayloe Ross, Ted Shawn, Casey Stengel, Gladys Swarthout, Sara Teasdale, Virgil Thomson, Harry S. Truman, Dick Van Dyke, Dennis Weaver, Pearl White.
(*) Hillbilly, A Cultural History of an American Icon, by Anthony Harkins
(**) [Encarta Dictionary: English (North American)]
