Urban Crime vs. Redneck Crime: An Analysis

When I moved to Indianapolis, my Mom was concerned about the big-city crime. But I’ve experienced far more crime in Evansville and in the neighboring small towns where I grew up. My rural friends think that’s weird.

On the flip side, thanks to those early years, I now lock my car doors when I stop for gas in Anderson if there is a shopping bag from the Dollar Store in my back seat. My urban friends think that’s weird.

In order to alleviate some of the confusion all around, I’ve compiled the following list of Urban Crime situations and their Redneck Crime counterparts. In short, Urban Crime is predictable and thus a little easier to avoid. Redneck Crime is another matter, as David Lynch and the Cowen Brothers have discerned.

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Urban Crime: You kick someone’s ass because they owe you money.

Redneck Crime: You kick someone’s ass because you think they’re looking at you funny.

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Urban Crime: You steal CDs because you can sell them for fast cash.

Redneck Crime: You steal a moldy Bob Seger cassette without its case because you like Bob Seger. You take the Metallica CD for your cousin. You leave the Tori Amos CD. If you see a Busta Rhymes CD, you wait around to see who comes out to the car so you can kick their ass. Unless they are bigger than you.

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Urban Crime: You break into a house and steal the TV and VCR because you can sell them.

Redneck Crime: You break into a house and steal everything there because you’re a group of teenage skinheads. You take the TV and VCR because you don’t have one. You take the mannequin so you can bust it up and leave it in an alley later. You take the dishes, office supplies, toaster, knick-knacks, socks, electric drill and computer books because hey, who doesn’t need more junk. You take the tampons because you can give them to your girlfriend.*

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Urban Crime: You leave someone a threatening note because their brother has been harrassing your brother at school.

Redneck Crime: You burn a cross in someone’s front yard because they’re one-quarter Italian.**

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Urban Crime: You see an apartment door ajar and take a quick peek inside to see if there’s anything valuable worth stealing later.

Redneck Crime: You see an apartment door ajar and you walk in and take a mediocre Walmart blanket off the bed because you could use an extra blanket.*

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Urban Crime: You steal a carton of Outback leftovers from a car because you’re hungry.

Redneck Crime: You steal someone’s groceries out of their trunk while they’re carrying the first load into their apartment, because you’re an asshole.*

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Urban Crime: You open an unlocked car door and take the change from the console.

Redneck Crime: You open an unlocked car door and take a used pair of size 2 jeans which are much too small for you to squeeze your fat ass into and which sport a hand-sewn heart-shaped knee patch which would render them instantly recognizable (if you did manage to wear them) to the person you robbed and her boyfriend, who live near you and the scene of the robbery, and at least one of whom is prepared to kick your ass.*

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Urban Crime: You take someone’s unattended quarters off the dryer at the laundromat.

Redneck Crime: You reach in the washer and take their wet clothes.*

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Urban Crime: You steal a few dollars because you’re jonesing for a rock.

Redneck Crime: You steal a few dollars and use it to buy a Mountain dew, a Slim Jim, and a dollar’s worth of gas.

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Urban Crime: You spray-paint your tag on a train car in giant, squishy, three dimensional letters, so that viewers across the country can recognize your artistic skills as the train rolls by.

Redneck Crime: You pray-paint the word “ASS” on the front of the neighborhood grocery store. (On second thought, maybe that is your tag.)

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Urban Crime: You steal a car because you sell stolen cars or you’re on the run from the law.

Redneck Crime: You steal a car from someone’s front yard, take it for a joyride, and return it later.*

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Urban Crime: You break a car window to take the stereo.*

Redneck Crime: You break a car window for the hell of it and leave the stereo.*

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* It happened to me.

** It happened to someone I know.

Blackie and Blondie and other Rednecks

I grew up in a small town where the adults I knew were named Boney, Channel Cat, Dino, Pebob, Boomer, Skeet, and Tuckie. It’s important to note that while these aren’t birth names, they tend to completely usurp the birth names for life. Tuckie’s extended family, for example, first learned of his real name during a conversation he had with them when he was 22.

Stinky and Tooter were cousins whose parents apparently wanted to forever enshrine the boys’ respective childhood farting incidents. Tooter should not be confused with his other cousin, Tootsie, whose name allegedly means “brother,” though I don’t know why. Those who aren’t named for bodily functions are often given names representing their unique and important status as siblings — I’ve known three sets of Bubbys and Sissys. Then there are those nicknames inspired by embarrassing moments that originate outside the diaper years. I’ll spare you the rumor responsible for Goat’s moniker.

A friend of mine had both a grandmother and an aunt named Jimmy. I also knew women named Billy and Freddie, but that’s straying a little from the topic at hand. For reasons I can’t fathom, my friend’s entire extended family enjoyed naming their dogs after family members.  They only chose about four names though. Rusty was an obvious choice. But Jimmy, Maggie and Audrey were a little odder. Even stranger was visiting one of his relatives with a dog named Audrey hours after visiting the last relative with a dog named Audrey, all of which occurred after visiting Aunt Audrey that morning. Stranger still was the fact that these dogs had human names while I lived across the street from a man named Pooch.

As an adult I crossed the highway and lived in Evansville for a while, where I briefly dated a girl with light brown hair and hazel eyes named Blackie. I recoiled at the name as soon as  I heard it, but I liked her, so what can you do. Her perfectly serviceable real name was offensive to her, as were the many socially-acceptable shortened forms of it. Blackie was so called because as a child, she had dark hair while her sister, often mistaken for her twin, was a blond. It’s the sibling thing again. Blackie and Blondie never changed their names even though their hair colors eventually ceased to reflect the names’ origins. The embarrassing day came when I was asked to introduce Blackie to an African-American man who we’d just decided to play a round of pool with in a bar. He was understandably taken aback and I felt like a crosseyed racist Evansvillian. It was one of the many incidents that reminded me that in the end, Blackie just wasn’t going to be my kind of people.

The morals of the story are thus: family is important, farting is hilarious, and you don’t need a professional name when you’re going to grow up to be a drug dealer.