When I was little, my parents practiced what was considered a perfectly acceptable style of child rearing at the time: you move into a neighborhood that doesn’t have too many trashy people, you make sure the school district isn’t the laughing stock of the state, you finish a basement complete with a television to get the children out of your hair, and you pretty much let society do the rest. There were no highly regimented play schedules. They never tried to pick and choose what friends would be most advantageous to our development. They never abused our teachers, demanding that we belonged accelerated school programs if we were not willing to do the work. We were never forced into extracurricular activities that we showed no interest in. If we weren’t doing what we were supposed to, we were screamed at, punished, sometimes beaten (if we really really deserved it), but usually we were just mocked for our shortcomings... but sort of in a good way.

I’ve been told that childhood is different today. Apparently, a child’s schedule resembles that of some horrid reality program, featuring this millionaire or that super model and worse. Every minute is supposedly spoken for and tracked on a parent’s blackberry; filled with soccer practices, cultural events, play dates and SAT classes... and then comes the first grade. Perhaps this is complete nonsense and untrue, but that is how television portrays contemporary childhood. Since I recoil at the sight of children under the age of twenty-one, and don’t plan to ever have any of my own, on this I’ll just have to take the media at it’s word.

Granted, I was a wastrel as a child. Never doing what I was supposed to, always in trouble, parents always being called into school, constantly grounded, etc. etc.... but I don’t think more structure really would have changed any of that. Had my parents tried to regiment every last minute of my childhood, I probably would have been a psychopathic and suicidal fuck-up, instead of the lazy fuck-up that I was and am to this day.

It’s in my nature.

When it came to teaching us a sense of morality and differentiating between right and wrong, they gave us the remedial basics. Racism is wrong. Follow the golden rule. Golden rule good. Avoid all forms of organized religion, nationalism and every other form absolutist ideology; but never judge another for practicing a religion as long as they didn’t shove it in your face. Don’t be greedy. Greed bad. Always try to be respectful, but never suffer a fool. The Nuremberg Trials were somehow worked into our morality lesions as an example of personal accountability and responsibility (exactly how I can’t quite remember, but I remember my father referencing the Nuremberg Trials A LOT). Otherwise, it was believed that an evolving society and popular cultural would shape us as human beings, and to fight against these forces would be like fighting windmills.

There was one exception to my parents otherwise laissez-faire philosophy towards child rearing. They, or more particularly my father, lived in fear that his children would grow up to become southerners. He was by birth and by sentiment a New Englander. His later childhood was spent in an Allied conscripted home of a Bavarian Nazi Party member, complete with Nazi servants and Nazi tutors; after which he spent his teenage years in what he considered to be the equally morally destitute environment of the American Deep South at the beginning of the civil rights movement. He had a blood curdling hatred of anything remotely associated with white southern culture. This is not to say that he hated southerners as individuals, his closest friend to the year they both died was a Mississippian who generally shared his views; but any individual who denied southern culture’s accountability for either slavery or segregation was treated with the same contempt as any person who denied German accountability for the Second World War or the existence of the Holocaust. Southern Revisionism was not tolerated. Shelby Foote’s name was not treated kindly.

He was always self-conscious about raising children south of the Mason-Dixon line. Any slight inflection of drawl in our speech, perceived southernness in our attitudes, or affection for southern culture would result in methodic and relentless lectures about the evils of lynching, State’s rights and Elvis Priestly. Faulkner, Capote and Williams were allowed on the bookshelves, he felt they adequately trashed southern culture; but otherwise, everything remotely Dixie was forbidden in our house. Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline records were forbidden. Watching He-Haw on television would have resulted in being grounded for at least two weeks.

I’m not saying he was right, I’m certainly not saying he was wrong, but this was how southern culture was treated in our household.

One night, I guess around 1980 or so, I was sitting in front of the television when my father walked into the room.

“What are you watching?” he asked me.

“It’s the Dukes of Hazard, Daaaad” I answered, rolling my eyes, baffled that he was so uninformed about the best tv show ever. “It’s about Bo and Luke Duke. They’re cousins and drive a really cool car called the General Lee and fight a mean fat guy called Boss Hogg who has a white car and they shoot bows and arrows because they’re not allowed to own guns because they make moonshine in live with their uncle who’s really really nice because he looks like Santa Claus except he wears overalls and they also live with another cousin called Daisy because she has really cool shorts.”

My father just stood there, staring at me for a moment, completely speechless. Then, slowly, his face began to turn. Veins began popping out on his forehead. His complexion turned purple. I trembled, as his face was turning into his ‘I’m about to beat you within an inch of your life’ face. And then the tirade began.

Lots of “fucks” and “Goddamns” and “rednecks” this and “bigots” that and a culture permeated with evil, ya de yada yada. I sat, speechless and terrified. My father was typically even tempered, more prone towards snide sarcasm than violent hostility. On the rare occasions when he screamed like that, chances were I was going to feel it the next day on my ass.

“But Dad,” I cried, “they’re just a couple of good ol’ boys. They don’t mean no harm!”

*INSERT. MUSHROOM CLOUD. HERE*