A redneck’s ode to his mother

Like most rednecks, I tend to get a little sentimental on Mother’s Day.

Why shouldn’t I get a little choked up, after all she set aside 18-odd years of her life to raise me. OK, check that, 51-odd years and counting. She’s apparently not finished yet.

I figure the least I can do is dedicate the chorus of a song or a little bit of verse to her efforts. Thinking about it awhile I figured an acrostic was in order. Actually the word acrostic didn’t come to my mind while I was thinking about what to write, I looked it up after I figured out that was what I wanted to do. (This column writing process can get kinda messy.)

The thought process actually went more like this: “Think about songs that talk about or use the word ‘mother.’ That led me, strangely enough, to the Ray Wylie Hubbard penned song made famous by Jerry Jeff Walker, ‘Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother.’”

I have actually heard Hubbard perform the song in concert among a park full of hippie sorts in Colorado. He wrote the song after an incident in a cowboy bar in Red River, where his long hair and tie-dyed shirt didn’t exactly go over well. The song is about the short fight that ensued and doesn’t really have anything to do with Mother’s Day except that Hubbard used a famous acrostic in the chorus.

In case you haven’t made it to the dictionary yet, an acrostic is a series of lines or verses in which the first, last or other particular letters, when taken in order spell out a word.

Ray Wylie’s acrostic used the word MOTHER.

Here is his acrostic:

z M is for the Mud flaps she gave me for my pickup truck.

z O is for the Oil I put on my hair.

z T is for T-Bird.

z H is for Haggard.

z E is for Eggs.

z R is for Redneck.

If the band played this song late in the evening all the rednecks got sentimental thinking about their mom while the hippies got a good laugh knowing the song wasn’t about motherhood at all. Myself, I always counted cowboy hats and ponytails before deciding which side I came down on. My mother truly had, as the song said, “raised a son so well.”

So, now that I only have a short amount of column space left it’s time to get down to my own acrostic in honor of my own mom.

z M is for the Mecuricome she daubed upon my cuts.

z O is for Obey, which my father’s belt always assured I did.

z T is the Things she did for me unselfishly.

z H is for the Heart of gold.

E is for the Eggs she fixed me every morning.

z R is for the Redneck she raised.

Man those words shore is purty. I think I might just cry. Thanks momma.