In the 1950’s, similar to the Beverly Hillbillies, my grandparents left the Ozark Mountains with a carload of kids for the land of fruits and nuts… California. Their journey was slightly different than that of the Clampetts, however, as they didn’t strike oil. In fact, my grandparents probably lost a whole lot of oil on narrow and undulating Route 66.

They didn’t settle in a Beverly Hills mansion, either. Instead, my grandparents paid $8,000 for a 1,000 square foot starter house in Santa Fe Springs, raising six kids in that tiny 2-bedroom, 1-bathtub, and 1-toilet house. For a bunch of hillbillies from Berryville, Arkansas, however, this was paradise.

With Berryville Hillbillies, just about everything was fried: chicken, catfish, my mom. Everything was fried, and nothing was baked, except for my grandma’s cornbread (to go with a big pot of pinto beans) and, of course, my mom.

We were far from having the wealth of the Beverly Hillbillies, but we weren’t the poorest family either. We were upper lower class or lower middle class. We had a car, a television, and a full set of matching TV trays…in their own rolling rack!

Most people have a junk drawer. We had a junk dining room table. Everything landed here from the bills to the flyswatter to the National Enquirer. This is precisely why we needed that set of TV trays.

Our house was the neighborhood smokehouse. No, we didn’t barbecue. The family all chain-smoked…with the windows shut! Before there were ever smoke alarms or Coronavirus masks, we kids had to practice fire safety by crawling around the house to keep from dying from smoke inhalation. Throw in a pool table and some neon signs and our house could be confused for a bar.

[bartender] “Chuck, quit peein’ in the corner just because the bathroom is occupied. Shoot, I’d almost rather you just go back to usin’ the sink.”

My family couldn’t afford to fix their teeth or put gas in the car, but they always managed to afford those “smokes.” Stockpiling cigarettes was actually very good retirement planning because they have a higher value in prison.

We also had a swamp cooler – anybody else have a hillbilly air conditioner? Swamp coolers are stupid! Although they do keep the house nice and cool, it’s like living in a rain forest. Everything gets soaked…the newspaper, potato chips, toilet paper. And it is impossible to do your math problems when the paper is that wet.

[teacher] “Marcus, why isn’t your homework done? Did your dog eat it?”
[me] “No, my dog died last night…he drowned…sleeping in front of the swamp cooler” (OK…maybe not necessarily true).

My uncle Deryl had a fairly nice Mercury Cougar, but it quickly became a piece of junk ’cause ol’ Deryl wouldn’t even put oil in it. Thinking back, I wonder if he just never figured out how to open the hood? The car radio worked… when it wanted to, and the windows would just drop on their own. But that cigarette lighter never failed.

Being the fat kid in my early teens, it was impossible to find a 38-inch waist and 24-inch inseam so my grandma would have to hem up my new pair of corduroy pants (a better alternative to rolling them up three times to keep them from dragging the ground). This was way before the Big and Tall or Wide Load stores. In fact, Wide Load also provided the trucks to deliver my families’ houses… and you can still see them on the highways to this very day.

I hated “cords”. Mine were so cheap that they lost some of their ribs… like retread tires on big rigs. I still cry on road trips when I see all of that truck tire carnage on the shoulder …‘cause it reminds me of those awful pants.

So on Sunday after Church, instead of going antiquing, Berryville Hillbillies might go to the Goodwill for some really nice clothes. The Goodwill provides a fantastic service. However, a little business trivia… In accounting, “goodwill” represents the amount you overpaid when buying a company. In other words, “You got screwed!” Which is exactly how I felt when I had to wear those clothes.

Life was quite different after leaving the Ozarks. These Berryville Hillbillies did not know social graces. Their feet were like leather because they would go barefoot everywhere… walking to the store, riding their bikes…putting out their cigarettes. My grandma actually did grind out her cigarettes using her feet!! Instead of athlete’s foot, my grandma had smoker’s foot. Ironically, hillbillies did wear shoes to go swimming in the lake.

When I visit the doctor and rattle off my list of ailments and medications, I try to joke it off by attributing this to my Ozarkian inbred blood. Expecting the doctor to laugh at my witticism, he instead throws me a curveball by stoically agreeing with me, “Probably.”

“What? I was half-kidding! Are you serious? Not what I was looking for Doc.”

Unfortunately, this bloodline seems to bring with it a pretty good chance of ending up with (brace yourself…morbid truth alert) cancer. Cancer to hillbillies is just part of the package deal like anorexia is to Hollywood socialites.

Here is a fun fact to close. The truck used by the Beverly Hillbillies on the television show now sits in the Ralph Foster Museum on the College of the Ozarks campus, my alma mater. The two very different worlds of Berryville and Beverly Hills may not be quite as far apart as we thought.