I guess southern people are or have been the "blunt" of more jokes and "put downs" than any other segment of our population. I'll admit that some of the "hazing" is justified while a lot of it is unfounded or out dated. If you lived in a rural area of the south certain things were expected of you. Some of them pretty strange to the casual  on looker .

Consider for instance the Muscadine. This cousin of the Grape grows wild in the south and is in high demand. Jelly, jam and wine. The demand exceeds the supply. Any "redneck' farm kid can take you to a place where Muscadines are heavy on the vine. I say can take you but he won't. The location of the fruit will be his life long secret. He may out of necessity share the location with a trusted friend. The reason for such an arrangement is the fact that the Muscadine vine tends to tangle itself in the branches of some pretty tall tree's. Two people have a better chance of getting the grape like fruit. When you find the vines full its best you harvest the fruit without much delay because wild animals love Muscadines. The average harvest from a good days picking is around two gallon . I have known folks that could manage to gather over twice that amount in a day but rarely. The big purple grape with the tough thick skin is a scarce commodity.

My cousin Charles was a good Muscadine man as I ever saw. He'd walk right up on the damn vines while the rest of us just got in each others way. He'd go off into the woods and come back after while with a of full two gallon "milk bucket" and some little animal that he had found during his hunt for the Muscadines. One year Charles brought some baby "Flying Squirrels" home after a trip to pick the fruit. I'd never seen one until then. Cuz(Charles)managed to keep them baby squirrels a live and later release them back to their natural living environment. 

The number of things that nature provides for us makes up a long list. Most people forget or get out of touch with all the bounty that's there for the taking. The rural farm and country kid in days past learned certain things as a right of passage. The country kid was pretty much a self sustaining individual at an early age. He was taught to be and allowed to be self motivated.  I find it hard to convey what I'm trying to say. I don't want to sell anyone short while praising someone else. Having lived in both worlds as a youth I also know of the problems and demands of being a "city" kid. Some of which I'll address later.

Before I move us on to other things I need to "touch base" on a couple of more country experiences. Most everyone that lived on a farm or in an old country style house knows about "building a fire" for heat or cooking. I don't know who starting calling it building a fire instead of making a fire but they did and it don't matter anyhow so long as the job gets done. Most everyone burned wood rural Alabama. Oak and Hickory were the two most used woods. Once you got them to burning they made a good hot fire that didn't burn itself out real fast. The trick was to get it to burning. We kept special cut wood for that purpose. We called it "kindling". The kindling was just dry thin pieces of wood that burned easier than a big chunk of firewood. However the real secret to a good fire was the "Pine Knot". Any kid worth his salt could find a good supply of these easy to light, hot burning chunks of Pine pitch wood.

Fish bait. The "Red Worm" has been the staple of "creek bank" fishing bait for as long as anyone can remember. A shovel and a tin can would put you in the bait business. Of course there was a better bait but it came at a higher price. The all American wasp nest and the little wiggly critters inside. Biggest problem was that mom and pop wasp might have a different plan for their off springs. I was always amazed at how many times just a few wasp could sting you in short period of time.