Ronda Rich
Syndicated Columnist
Someone – a non-Southerner – asked me the other day, “What is a good ole boy?”
I’m happy to answer that question. Let me tell you about the South’s good ole boys: First of all, you will probably see him at every Friday night home football game. He will cheer loudly when the team scores then yell louder at the referee when a bad call is made because he knows all the rules and has an eagle eye. Almost 100 percent of the time, he will be right.
On Saturdays, he will plan his chores about the SEC football television games and if his favorite team is playing at noon, he’ll quit for the day. He will still mostly cheer for the old SEC with the teams that went as far west as Arkansas. Good ole boys don’t take up much with outsiders.
On Sundays, he will gather his family together and assembly in the house of the Lord. He knows every word to “Just As I Am” and “I’ll Fly Away.”
If you need a prayer, a helping hand or a gun, you can count on him. During hunting season, he will camp in the cold of the night, looking for a big buck that can feed his family through the winter. It is quite likely that if you visit his house for a supper, he will say, “try this casserole with deer meat. Can’t tell the difference between it and beef.”
He drives a truck. That’s a sure bet. Sometimes, a nice one but he always has a beat-up one for the rough roads. And, most likely, the radio station is tuned to country music. It won’t be any of the new- fangled, hopping kind of stuff where the music blasts louder than the singer. He’ll choose the old-fashioned kind – some are still listening to Cash, Haggard, Alabama and Jones – but it will be songs by artists like Jason Aldean and Luke Bryan who speak to who they are. The singers who talk about calloused hands, broken hearts, farmland begging for water and Mama.
A good ole boy is just a call away. If the hay is down and the rain is coming, you can count on him. If a woman is alone at home and a drugged up stranger breaks in, a good ole boy, with his deer rifle and hand gun, can beat the law there. I know. I experienced it firsthand. That good ole boy and I put the lawbreakers away for a long, long time.
Jeans are their favorite. Except for Sundays, funerals and weddings, they’ll be rambling around in well-worn jeans and sometimes you can see the round, worn outline of a can of stuff.
Good ole boys love their mamas. They know they can count on her for homemade biscuits, their favorite cake and a piece of wisdom when they need it most.
When you see them in a restaurant, they’ll remove their favorite hat – John Deere or that SEC team they love – motion to kids to be quiet and say grace over the food before they eat.
There are a lot of good ole boys still fans of stock car racing, though a good many fell out over various reasons like rule changes and their favorite tracks being cast aside. They all still mourn for Dale Earnhardt.
They remember their manners. “Yes ma’am, no sir, thank you.” They tip their hats to one another and open the door for the ladies.
They will never take a knee when the anthem is played and they’re quite liable to take up a fist fight with those who do.
In short, good ole boys are some of the finest Americans that this country has ever known.
I’m grateful that my life has a heaping helping of good ole boys around. Thank God for them.
Ronda Rich is the author of the new best-selling novel: “St. Simons Island: A Stella Bankwell Mystery.” Visit www.rondarich.com to sign up for her free newsletter.