It’S Character, Not The Collar, That Counts

When I was a kid, my Grandpa White lived in a trailer behind our house. At night, I’d sit on a vinyl-covered chair, watching him play poker with old men he’d known forever.

My aunt lived in a trailer across the pasture. I spent summer days there with my cousin, John Lee, running toy trucks through the dirt and arm wrestling belly-down on the ground.

Trailers otherwise known as mobile homes provide the backdrop for many of my childhood memories in rural, southern Illinois. Just two months ago, we had a family Christmas party at Dad’s trailer.

So maybe you can imagine the sudden ache I felt in my gut not long ago when a friend told me her weekend plans included a different kind of trailer party. The phrase she used was “trailer trash party.”

She was trying to choose a costume. She expected other women to wear their hair in curlers, and men to don sleeveless white undershirts the hip call “wife-beater shirts.” Guests were asked to bring “tacky snacks,” she said, like molded Jell-O.

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard derogatory remarks about people who live in mobile homes. Blue-collar bashing is alive and well.

Some people bash boldly, as in, “I’ll never find a good husband in a town with so many blue-collar workers.” Others are more subtle, hinting they just don’t have much in common with those people.

I never really considered collar colors back in Coulterville, where I lived until my early 20s. Most people there work in coal mines, factories and on farms. My grandma stacked comic books for 25 years. A cousin, a stepbrother and both my brothers-in-law are ironworkers, as were several older relatives. My aunt works second shift at a coal mine.

The hands of our pastor and town doctor were strangely soft.

Coulterville, (Pop. 1,100), was so small that strangers who happened by Waldrups’ Cafe on Sunday mornings for biscuits and gravy must’ve felt like they were crashing a private party. I didn’t realize how unusual our lifestyle might seem until I brought friends home from college. One amazed friend said he felt like he’d stepped into a John Steinbeck novel.

That’s also when I noticed the jabs and stereotypes can come from either direction. One night at my aunt’s catfish restaurant, I chatted with an employee as we washed dishes. He asked where I worked, and I said I was finishing a bachelor’s degree in journalism. His cold and final comment: “Well, isn’t that special.”

I grew up on a farm a few miles north of Coulterville, past the cemetery where several generations of my ancestors are buried. For a kid who loved the outdoors, the farm was a slice of heaven. Hayrides, campouts, lakes, creeks, hundreds of acres of woods. At harvest, my sisters and I sneaked into grain trucks and buried ourselves in soybeans the way other kids burrowed in fallen leaves.

I remember sitting at the kitchen table when Dad an ironworker when he wasn’t farming came home from work, hard hat in one hand and lunch box in the other. I was proud of his work. On Sundays, we’d pile into our old Dodge Dart and drive to his latest job site, usually a bridge or locks across the Mississippi River. When other kids asked about my dad, I’d always mention the bridges and how many different knots he could tie.

Very few of my extended family have left the area. When young people move away, the joke is always, “You’ll come back.” And most people do. It’s hard to stay away from a place where, as the song goes, everybody knows your name.

I chose a career that wasn’t possible in Coulterville. I love what I do, meeting hundreds of people with as many fascinating points of view.

But one view will always make me wince, and that’s blue-collar bashing. When it happens, for a split second I’m amazed. Then I feel a little ashamed. I wonder what the folks back home would think of my socializing with people who take such casual jabs at their way of living.

Sometimes I try to set bashers straight. Other times, I walk away.

But I have a suggestion for whoever throws the next trailer-themed costume party like the one my friend attended.

Ask one guest to pretend she’s my Great-Aunt Nellie, a trailer-dweller for several years near the end of her long life. Pick someone who can weave wonderful tales, stories that leave people enchanted one minute and doubled over laughing the next.

Another guest can dress up like Aunt Judy. (Sorry, that’s nothing more exciting than Levi’s and a sweatshirt.) That person should fry up a mouthwatering batch of catfish and onion-laced hushpuppies.

Now loosen that white collar for a little more breathing room. You might just enjoy yourself.