By Stephen Smoot
You can find them almost anywhere. They show up at the diner every morning to gab with friends, enjoy a cup of coffee, and chow down on eggs and bacon. They go to the hardware store “for a few things” and end up chewing the fat with staff or friends for much longer than they need. They drive tractors in the fields, old pickup trucks up and down the road, and are always good for a friendly wave or a quick and wise piece of advice.
You can recognize them immediately even though they often look quite different from each other. Whether rail thin or with a bit of a belly, they usually feature white (or no) hair, jeans or overalls, and worn boots. Most sport ball caps that, like the jeans, look like they have seen much better days, but wear more comfortably than anything more expensive.
No rural community could really run without good old country boys.
Good ol’ country boys know much and say less. They don’t work until a set time, but till the job is done. No matter how old they are, they’re strong enough to help you lift whatever you need lifted. They drink coffee in the morning, water or sweet tea at work or on the farm, and maybe a cold beer to wash down the day at home.
No matter how rough they dress to go out on the farm or elsewhere to work during the week, the suit they wear to church is immaculate. The missus takes care of that for him because she loves and appreciates her husband who has done so much to provide for her and the family.
If you see a circle of good ol’ country boys jawing, chewing the fat, or “solving the problems of the world,” do not be surprised if they make you pass a test of wits and intelligence that the College Board or SAT could never equal in ingenuity or entertainment.
Walk up to a small group sometime. If they don’t know you, they will silently look at you, certainly evaluating you. The test comes when one of them addresses you, saying something that is probably about 60 percent silly and 40 percent plausible, but almost certainly wrong. The expectation is that you will respond with something a little more silly and a little less plausible. The conversation goes back and forth, entirely deadpan and serious in tone, until the statements are completely absurd. Follow that path to the end.
If you pass the intelligence test, they may give your words a fair listen.
City people live in sociological and economic silos. If wealthy, they will travel the world to see people just like them, travel to places just like where they left, and not really experience life broadly or deeply.
If you could see the history of good ol’ country boys written down and tacked to their lapel, you would find people who battled nature on behalf of their farms and families for decades. You will see men who went to war, not to command from the rear, but to be commanded at the front. You will see men who look too old for anything physical, but they remain valuable volunteers with fire or EMS. You will see men who greeted success with humility and learned from every failure. You may not always see people who thrived in life, but they are definitely survivors.
Shake their hands and you will feel the hard work of their lives etched into their palms.
No matter how many zeros their bank account holds, their attire and vehicles are plebeian because why pay too much for something you don’t need?. To these folks, waste is a cuss word that you happen to be allowed to say in polite company.
They hate politics and say they have no use for politicians, but pay close attention to both anyway because government is where the biggest threat to their livelihood, whatever that may be, comes from. Then those frustrated by the process end up running and winning local government races, usually injecting common sense into the process.
They know how to fix most of what you need fixed. If they can’t fix it, they know a guy. Some have crafted truly ingenious inventions, but in true country boy style, never patented what they created because they assume someone else had the idea already. Usually they turn out to be the first, however. They have medical knowledge like they have knowledge of what’s wrong with a car. If they’ve experienced it, they know it and they never forget how to deal with it.
Children are fascinated with these men, often patriarchs of the family that they might call “Paw Paw”, “Grandpa”, “Uncle”, or some other term of family endearment. Old country boys are always good for a story about the old days, making some kind of repair job extremely interesting, or teaching generations-old wisdom about the weather, farming, cars, animals, or pretty much anything.
No community runs without them. They often wear several hats, supporting their families, their work, service clubs, volunteer first responder organizations, historical societies, and more.
They are also the chroniclers of the community. They know who the running back was who gained all those yards to beat the big rival in 1983. They remember schools long closed, the teachers who gave them what they needed to move forward in life, and where the store that closed in 1996 used to be. They know who was the waitress at the local restaurant for 30 years, then retired and moved away. They know a thousand little details of lives well-lived in the community they’d never leave even for $10 million, at least that’s what they say, anyway.
They also remember the tragedies, who was killed in a hunting or a car accident, what family lost their lives in a house fire, and whose homes were destroyed in the flood.
Of course among themselves they will debate endlessly over the details of these events, just because it’s fun for them to do so.
They stand tall like oak trees in the community, seemingly strong and immovable, as if they will occupy that spot and do the same things, share the same stories, and be around to ask advice from forever.
But they stand proudly until they can’t. Robert Frost once titled a poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” and we need to heed that lesson. They deserve appreciation for a lifetime of work, service, and raising good kids who love their community as much as their elders, even if they feel they have to leave.
Some day the current crop of good ol’ country boys will pass on. The lives they led, their encyclopedic knowledge of things both important and small, their abilities that they give freely (or at least charge a fair price for) they won’t always be here.
We shouldn’t wait until such men are beyond our ability to directly thank them to show appreciation. They may not always welcome the attention, but they all deserve it.
