Personally, I like the good ole days when we normal hillbillys lived on the "SouthSide".

I would rather have all my teeth pulled - at once - than deal with the uppitys in Tremont who stole OUR Southside.

If the uppitys don't like what we do in OUR hood, they can go back where they came from.  They were  NOT invited in the first place.

I thought that I was in the middle of a  war zone on the 4th of July - like I do EVERY 4th of July- but I didn't even waste my time looking out the window to see if any of Jerleen's family was outside.

I just knew it was Jerleen and her damn family again.

 After Jerleen and her damn family blew up the church's parking lot , they came over to my hood.  I could hear Jerleen, Bo and Vickie hollering in between the commercial firework booms and bangs.

 They ain't fooling me.  I'm not buying that icecream truck bullshit.

I highly doubt if any street in Cleveland was not lighting off fireworks.  Jerleen's white trash family was really busy blowing up very street on the east side and west side of town - two sides of town AT ONCE!

Those damn hillbillys sure are talented.  

If the commercial fireworks are that bothersome, I noticed a couple of nice houses for sale in Bay Village.

* My blogs expressing my Freedom of Speech Rights, especially on matters of public concern, are my opinion and not the opinion of my friends, family or employer*

sophia honey yoga and guy -

I thought it was pretty funny myself. Apparently, I've been missed. Maybe I should re-visit the "hood."

sophia honey yoga and guy -

There are no parking spots in Tremont.

Blowing up the Church sounds logical.

Nah,,,, I still believe Jerleen and that damn no good for nothing Sloan family is behind the commercial fireworks.  

You know how Jerleen and her family are, Guy.  They are a great big group of a-holes!

* My blogs expressing my Freedom of Speech Rights, especially on matters of public concern, are my opinion and not the opinion of my friends, family or employer*

I miss Jerleen in Tremont, too - the fine folks in the Tremont have been sanitized for sure.  We broke down in our car last night and were towed-rescued by Keith, who grew up on the Southside (he huffed when I called it Tremont) - but now lives in Hartville - renting a house with eighty acres for the price of a rental in Tremont. I didn't get into it with him - but he mentioned how the City always owns your house - and can take it from you for a few months of back taxes...so I am going to assume he lost his house to foreclosure through tax lien sales.

Keith went to Lincoln West high school and reminesced about drag racing with his teenage friends on Quigley Ave. while growing up - he is married with kids, but I could see the bad boy tattoos on his arms from his days as an "outlaw."  

The old Southside was cool.  Lots of fond memories for me.

My cousins Bo & Vickie Sloan, myself, and numerous others " A-holes " (as we are referred)  would go to Quigley nearly every weekend.  When the cops showed up, we would all run in different directions so they couldn't catch all of us.

Gentrification.    Selective code enforcement and tax lien foreclosures.  

Many of us hillbillys that lived in that area are going back home- to the hills- where we can live cheaper and not put up with shit.

A mass hillbilly exit will leave this area a further ghost town.  

Hillbillys have been in this area for a long time.  I traced my "A hole"  family to this area in the late 1800's and  history showed they were farmers and owned lots of property here.

They probably lit off fireworks back in the late 1800's too!

* My blogs expressing my Freedom of Speech Rights, especially on matters of public concern, are my opinion and not the opinion of my friends, family or employer*

I believe many of the newcomers to Tremont, where I have owned a home since 1985 and lived until November, 2012, behave in an un-Christian way to the long time residents and treat them poorly. They should be ashamed of themselves.

Somehow, they seem to think because their homes are more expensive, they are better. What nonsense! And many try to turn the area they moved to into a carbon copy of what they left. Trying to get rid of Angel's car repair and towing. What a blessing to have him so close!

Many are becoming big frogs in this little pond. I bet where they came from they were tadpoles.

I do hope they consider me a hillbilly too. I want to be lumped in with Jerleen and Lily, and Dianna, and Guy and all the other long time residents. Henry, too if they are calling him a hillbilly.

Technically, they might not: I have a M.A. and an M.B.A. My father's family came here before the American Revolution. The first Hinkle to come over founded the first Lutheran church in what is now Philadelphia, there is a Revolutionary War Hinkle Fort named after another ancestor.

We did have money once. My grandfather was chairman of a bank that failed in the Great Depresssion. He was so distressed at losing the money entrusted to the bank by the people, most of whom he was related to one way or the other, he put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

My father had a college degree in the 20's, when many did not finish high school (my mother needed only two years of college to teach).  The family dairy farm was lost, dad was happy to get a job driving a milk truck. "Any job is a good job when times are bad," he said. He lost some jobs because he refused to lie. He told me it was a blessing in disguise, because the firms failed, he would never have had any pension from them, but he got a government pension later, which increased with inflation. I, too, would have advanced further than Assistance V.P. in International Banking if I had been willing to go along to get along.

He later got a job with Soil Conservation, which he taught, and later became the head of the county Soil Conservation Service (remained a GS-4, though, too many others for him to get promoted higher. Now a college degree gets beginners a GS-4 or 5.)

His trainees thought the world of him. People came to him for help and advice and none were refused.

He farmed before work, after work, and weekends.

The farm we moved to had no indoor plumbing and there were huge gullies on the land. He put in plumbing, renovated the house a little at a time after saving the money to pay for it, filled in the gullies, contoured the land, and planted birds-foot trefoil for hay.

People would drive by to check out what he was doing and see that what he was recommending made sense.

He was an Elder of his church and Sunday School Superintendent.

He saved his money and so when interest rates skyrocketed in the 80's, instead of being in trouble paying variable rate loans, he invested in five-year CD's at 15%. Dad was proud that, although he had once lost everything (he even had to go live with his mother-in-law), there was $400-500 thousand to be left to his daughters, after dividing his savings equally between himself and his wife. (She got a CD in her name, the next in his name, then her name, etc.)

He was a fine man, his word was his bond and everyone knew it. He was like a rock. I am proud of him.

Some are already calling our times or the coming, sure as has happened to every other country that prints money like mad, The Greater Depression. When it hits the fan, I fear many will not do as well. The lessons of hard work and thrift seem to have been lose.

His (and mom's) lessons of thrift were passed on to me, a good thing, too, since my brain lesion forced me to take disability retirement sooner than I planned, so I have to live on less that I might otherwise have.

I am sure in this instance both my father and mother, who would never have behaved as many of these newcomers do, would want to be called hillbillies, as a badge of honor.

Love you all!

You are a bit too smart and don't necessarily meet their definition of 'Stupid Hillbilly" like the rest of us, but we will accept you anyway.

One day we will all get together for a good ole fashioned ' Hootenanny'.

This is cousin Jethrow.  He's the good looking one in our family.  

Jethrow is the King of Fireworks!

* My blogs expressing my Freedom of Speech Rights, especially on matters of public concern, are my opinion and not the opinion of my friends, family or employer*

You can put yourself down in fun, but don't believe it yourself. You are all very smart people. Your couldn't do the jobs you do and have done and uncovered all you have uncovered otherwise.

You know what honor means, few do now, it seems.

You love your neighbors as yourselves.

You have common sense, which is uncommon.

"Booklearning" doesn't make you necessarily well educated. My nephew has some college, I don't know if he got the associates degree or not. He acts, deliberately, like a redneck "good old boy," but is highly educated. He is so because he has asked many questions of older people all his life, has a wide circle of friends, and is extremely well read on a wide number of issues.

I put myself, and my first husband, through college by working as a secretary. When I was secretary to the Theatre and Drama Dept. Chairman, I told a famous professor there, who had written "the" book on theatre, that I thought it was funny that some of the students in the department had remarked that I, a girl from a small farm outside a small town in the rural Bible Belt, was "sophisticated." It seemed to me that actors and those from big cities such as New York would be so described.

I can't remember exactly how he worded it, but it was something to the effect that I was and they were not because they were narrow in their reading, thinking and learning and added that therefore they would not be good actors in the long run.

Uncommon virtues you all have as well, the virtues celebrated in a simpler time by Rudyard Kipling.

In "If", for example:

"IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,...

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:"

and it concludes

"Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!'

His poem "Gunga Din" concludes

I don't know that those who call us (my thanks for including me the family, you all know I love you all,) hillbillies will come to realize that you are the better (wo)men, but they should. You are.

Love you all.

www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunga_Din