Don’t let me fool you — at heart I’m really a big redneck

Looks can be deceiving. I may dress like a preppy, I may listen to hard rock, but don’t let that fool you — I’m a redneck.

Now, most people wouldn’t associate us “Yankees” with being rednecks. For some reason, people assume that you can’t be a redneck unless you’re from south of the Mason-Dixon line, but my hometown would beg to differ.

When I was home visiting for the July 4 weekend, I was reminded of just how “redneck” I really am.

We had made plans with my friend Rich, who coincidentally had the nickname “Redneck” in high school, to go see fireworks at the Kinzua Reservoir.

We met up with Rich and his new girlfriend and proceeded to head off the see the fireworks. Normally, most people would take the highway down to the reservoir and be done with it.

Not a redneck.

We took off on some dirt road, one I vaguely remembered from our teenage days where we did nothing but cruise around back roads until they felt like a second home. Just like old times, I said to my wife, who in the backseat beside me felt like she had just entered a scene in “Deliverance.”

One thing was missing to make it like old times, instead of the rusty old Chevy we used to roll in, Rich was driving a Cadillac Escalade. Yes, an Escalade barreling down barren old roads, with us honking at campers parked back in the woods. I can only imagine the conversation going on at those campsites:

Harold: “Ethel, was that an Escalade that just flew past?”

Ethel: (Bent over the campfire cooking dinner) “Now Harold, why would there be a Cadillac in the woods, I think you ate too many beans.”

My wife, who didn’t exactly grow up in the big city either, had to comment that this felt a little too “redneck” for her.

Which prompted all the old stories to come flowing back like a babbling old spring rolling down a mountain.

“Remember that time you got stuck in the Smurf pits?” I asked Rich.

“I had mud covering all four tires and it took four different trucks to pull me out,” he said wistfully.

“How about the time you drove your Tempo into the beaver pond,” he countered.

And that’s when I realized; yep I’m a redneck. Anytime the phrase, “drove (insert vehicle here) into a beaver pond,” it’s usually a bad sign.

Ironically, it was the 15th anniversary this year of the great beaver pond incident, as my friends started calling it.

It was 1994, I had my driver’s license for about two months and it was the Fourth of July. Rich was having his annual fireworks extravaganza that evening, but it was around 2 in the afternoon and our group of friends was bored. There was Slim, Shrubby, Norm, Dick, Rich, Rich’s younger brothers Eric and Alex, and countless others.

We drove around for a while until we got the bright idea to go to a nearby sawmill that had a beaver pond in the back. Slim’s family owned the mill, and he suggested that we should see who could drive their trucks through the pond.

Most of the guys had big ole’ Chevys, Fords and Dodges with tires that were as tall as I was.

I had a 1987 Ford Tempo.

As everyone revved their engines and plowed through the water, hooting and hollering, I thought “I can do this.”

And, I was trying impress a girl, Jen, who I thought would be impressed that I could coax a mid-sized sedan across a small body of water. OK, I didn’t know a lot about women at the time.

After a minute of huddling, we decided the water wasn’t that deep, the Tempo should make it across and back. Now, what I hadn’t noticed was that everyone was going one at a time, and they were following the same path. As my buddy Norm hopped in, we never thought anything bad could happen. We were wrong.

The first few seconds of the ride were great, I put the car in its lowest gear and forged the pond, “We’re doing it, we’re doing it,” I yelled out.

Then I spied the pipe. It split the pond in two, and the guys in the trucks rolled over it with no problem. I knew that I couldn’t go over it, I’d bottom out.

“I’m going around,” I said out loud.

“No, no, no, nooooooooooo,” Norm screamed as I turned the wheel to the right.

What I didn’t know was that there was a road running through the pond, and there were two four-foot ditches on either side.

THUMP went the Tempo.

Water poured in the doors, the car sat at an awkward 45-degree angle, nose buried in the ditch.

I hit my horn, water bubbled to the top.

My friends, the ones who were supposed to pull me out, were too busy laughing hysterically to come save me. Finally, Rich came to the rescue and pulled my sopping wet car to dry land.

As the story ended, my wife looked at me and, as she sometimes does, asked, “Are you stupid?”

Rich, with a grin simply answered, “Nah, he’s just a redneck.”