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The red is where Bush won in
2004; blue is where Kerry won in 2004. Sucks to
be Kerry, man! |
"I'm not sure where we went wrong,"
says Ellen McCormack, nervously fondling the recycled
paper cup holding her organic Kona soy latte. "It
seems like only yesterday Rain was a carefree little
boy at the Montessori school, playing non-competitive
musical chairs with the other children and his care
facilitators."
"But now..." she pauses, staring
out the window of her postmodern Palo Alto home. The
words are hesitant, measured, bearing a tale of family
heartbreak almost too painful for her to recount. "But
now, Rain insists that I call him Bobby Ray."
Even as her voice is choked with emotion,
she summons an inner courage -- a mother's courage --
and leads me down the hall to "Bobby Ray's"
bedroom, for a firsthand glimpse at the psychic devastation
that claimed her son.
She
opens the door to a reveal a riot of George Jones CDs,
reflective 'mudflap mama' stickers, empty foil packs
of Red Man, and U.S. Marine recruiting posters. In the
middle of the room: a makeshift table made from a utility
cable spool, bearing a the remains of a gutted catfish.
"This used to be all Ikea,"
she says, rocking on heels between heaved sobs. "It's
too late for us. Maybe it's not to late for me to warn
others."
Pandora's Moon Pie Box
While poignant, Ellen McCormack's painful
battle to save her son is far from isolated. Across
coastal America, increasing numbers of families are
discovering that their children have been lured into
"Cracker" culture -- a new, freewheeling underground
youth movement that celebrates the hedonistic thrills
of frog-gigging and outlaw modified sprint cars. No
one knows their exact number, but sociologists say that
the movement is exploding among young people in America's
most fashionable zip codes.
"We first detected it a few years
ago, with the emergence of the trucker hat phenomenon,"
says Gerard Levin, professor of abnormal sociology at
the University of California. "At first we thought
it was some sort of benign, ironic strain. By the time
we realized the early wearers really were interested
in seed corn hybrids and Peterbilts, it had already
escaped containment."
Levin
points to 'Patient Zero,' who in 1997 was a 23-year
old graduate student in Gender Studies at San Francisco
State University.
"During a cross-country trip to
New York, he stopped at the Iowa 80 Truck Stop in Walcott,
Iowa, and bought a John Deere gimme cap as a gag souvenir,"
says Levin. "Within a year, he had dropped out
of graduate school, abandoned his SoMa apartment, and
was working at a drive-thru liquor store. Today he is
a wealthy televangelist in Bossier City, Louisiana."
The contagion of 'Patient Zero' would
prove devastating. Soon trucker hats were appearing
throughout trendy coastal neighborhoods like Williamsburg
and Park Slope and Portrero Hill, often accessorized
with chain wallets and 'wife beater' t-shirts. A new
alternative youth movement had emerged, rejecting the
staid norms of establishment NPR society and embracing
the 'tune-in, turn-on, chug-up' ethos of the Pabst Blue
Ribbon underground. Before long, it would broadcast
its siren call to an even younger generation -- one
whose parents were woefully unequipped to recognize
it.
Youthquake
"It was one day last spring,"
says Ellen McCormack. "My life partner Carol and
I were in the garage, working on a giant Donald Rumsfeld
papier mache head for the Bay Area March Against the
War, when Rain walked by. I thought he looked kind of
strange, so I stopped him and looked closely into his
eyes. Then I realized the truth -- he was wearing a
mullet. I was shocked, but he swore to me that it was
only ironic."
"After a few months, it was clear
Rain had lied to us -- that hideous Kentucky waterfall
was completely earnest," she adds, choking back
sobs.
Her 18-year old son would soon exhibit
other signs of disturbing changes.
"I was driving past a McDonalds
one day last summer, and I thought I saw Rain's bike
outside. He had told me earlier that he was going to
a friend's house to stuff envelopes for the Dennis Kucinich
campaign. I pulled a U-turn and headed back," she
recalls. "When I confronted him in the parking
lot, he started giving me a lame story about how he
was only there to protest globalization, but I could
smell the french fries on his breath."
McCormack says that Rain's erratic behavior
would also come to include excessive politeness and
deference.
"Everytime
I tried to talk to him it was 'yes Momma,' and 'no Momma,'
when he knows damn well my name is Ellen," she
says, anger rising in her voice. "It was like I
didn't even know him anymore."
McCormack tried an intervention with
friends from the Anti-war community, but to no avail.
In October, Bobby Ray packed up his Monte Carlo and
left for basic training at Camp Pendleton.
"I have no son," she says
in a barely audible whisper.
Across the country in toney Westchester
County, New York, Jim and Sandy Vandenberg describe
a similar tale of family grief.
"We are people of faith who keep
the Sabbath," says Sandy, a curator in the Dada
collection of the Museum of Modern Art. "Even when
she was a toddler, we made sure Emily got up early every
Sunday morning to read the New York Times Book Review.
Sunday morning was our time, until..."
"Until those damned Jesus bastards
stole my little girl," interrupts her husband,
barely containing his anger. Once a Freshman honors
student in Lacanian Deconstruction Theory at NYU, their
daughter is now better known as Lurleen McDaniel --
reigning Princess of the Tulsa Livestock Show and Rodeo.
In
Bainbridge Island, Washington, single mom Jane Michelson
says she began suspecting that her son Brian was in
trouble after he started hanging with a new crowd at
school.
"These weren't normal kids, neighborhood
kids in Che t-shirts who want to drop a couple of hits
of X and chill on Radiohead," she says. "They
would talk in a sort of strange code language, like
'Roll Tide!' and 'Gig 'em Ags!' and 'Piiiig Sooieeee!'"
Signs of trouble would soon multiply.
"One day I got into my Volvo and
hit the stereo preset for Pacifica Radio, and then I
heard this obscene 'Save a Horse Ride a Cowboy' song
coming from the speakers," she recalls. "The
very next week, the maid found a tin of Skoal in his
Wranglers. I told him him right then -- it was either
me, or his tobacco-spitting friends."
Now
known as Randy Dale Cash, her estranged son is a starting
linebacker for Sul Ross State University in Alpine,
Texas.
Peer Pressure
Jane Michelson is not alone in her story.
Throughout coastal America, school administrators and
parents are reporting an alarming surge in 'Cracker'
cliques on campus. Also known as 'Y'alls' or 'Neckies,'
officials say the groups thrive by attracting outcasts
and misfits from the student body.
"We try hard to engage all of our
students in fun, healthy activities like Progressive
Eco-Action March and Rage Against Intolerance Week,"
says Lawrence DiBenedetto of Patrice Lumumba Magnet
School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "Unfortunately,
there are going to be those who fall through the cracks,
into a life of bass fishing and stockcar racing."
It appears those cracks are widening.
In one recent three-week period, fourteen high school
students in Portland, Oregon were suspended for distributing
pork rinds; a Burlington, Vermont high school was briefly
closed for decontamination after janitors found a bible
hidden in a restroom; and forty-six undergraduate coeds
at Swarthmore were expelled for staging clandestine
Mary Kay cosmetics parties.
"We
became suspicious after several heavily made-up students
arrived at a Katha Pollitt lecture in a pink Cadillacs,"
says Swarthmore Dean of Students Geraldine Marcus.
Some say the craze threatens even the
nation's most exclusive prep schools. At Exeter, Andover
and St. Albans, rumors abound of secret societies where
initiates are steeped in the black arts of restrictor
plate cheating and satellite descramblers. Washington's
elite Sidwell Friends School was nearly forced to close
after scandalized parents learned that several students
were openly touting Sams Club cards.
The Eclectic School Aid Hayseed Trip
To better understand what attracts young
affluent students to the subculture, I spent a recent
evening interviewing a group of self-described 'Neckies'
from exclusive New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois.
Like countless other Friday nights, the close-knit group
had made the 80 mile ritual journey to rural Belvidere,
Illinois, to cruise Steak 'N' Shake and hang out at
the Mills Fleet Farm parking lot.
"Y'all, check out these new mudders,"
says 17-year old 'Dakota,' proudly displaying the gigantic
knobbed tires under his radically lifted 4x4 Audi Allroad.
"I'm fixin' to get me a winch and Tuffbox fer it
next week."
Not
to be outdone, friend and fellow Neckie 'Duane' sounds
'Dixie' on the novelty horn of his jacked-up BMW M3.
An early graduation gift from his parents, Duane has
turned the expensive German coupe into an homage to
the Dukes of Hazzard's General Lee, complete with orange
Stars-and-Bars paint job and spit cup on the console.
"Grandma gave me some money fer
a summer study trip over ta Paris, but I thought the
paint job was cooler," laughs Duane. "Hell,
she thinks I'm over in the Sorbonne right now, studying
Foucault and all that shit."
"I'm a-fixin' to put in a nitrous
system on the General Lee, so I'ma call Grandma up and
aks her for some book money," he adds.
Like most of their classmates, these
North Shore Neckies were once bound for some of the
top universities in America -- Yale, Duke, Stanford,
Northwestern -- until they succumbed to the allure of
the Downhome slacker lifestyle. Now some openly talk
of dropping out, learning TIG welding, waiting tables
at Waffle House or draining oil at Jiffy Lube; some
even hint of enrolling at Iowa State. What drives privileged
teens to such seemingly self-destructive behavior?
"I guess you might could say we're
rebels," says Rachel 'Tyffanie' Stern, 17, lighting
a Merit Menthol 100. Once destined for Vassar, Stern
is now living with friends after her parents kicked
her out of the house for spending her bat mitzvah money
on a bass boat. Last month she became the youngest Jewish
female to win an event on the Bassmasters Pro Tour.
Pausing for furtive glances, several
of the teens share sniffs from a bottle of Harmon Triple
Heat deer scent.
"Wooo-eee, shit howdy, that's gonna
bring a mess of them whitetail bucks," says 19-year
old Wei-Li 'Lamar' Cheung. A former Westinghouse Science
Award winner, Cheung has devoted his chemistry and biology
skill to building a fledgling hunting supply business.
A first generation Asian-American, Cheung
says he was drawn to the group by their acceptance of
minorities. "Hell, I kept tellin' all my family
and teachers I wanna play fiddle, not violin,"
he explains. "The 'Necks accept me the way I am."
African-American Kwame 'Joe Don' Harris
agrees. "Just because I'm black, teachers were
always pushing me to go to Spellman to study Langston
Hughes and Thelonius Monk," says the 17 year old.
"These ol' boys here never laugh at my dream to
be a crew chief for the Craftsman Truck Series."
If there is one aspiration that unites
them all, it is the dream of moving to Branson, Missouri.
Long famed for its laid-back attitude toward religion,
country music and the military, Branson has become a
Mecca for radical young Neckies seeking an escape from
the stultifying conformity of their coastal hometowns.
"Shit, y'all, I heard Branson's
got like four Wal Marts, and more $5.95 all-day breakfast
buffets than Glencoe has Starbucks," enthuses Dakota,
adding quickly that "pardon my French."
"Plus it's only a short drive up
to Fort Leonard Wood," adds Tyffanie.
Talk arises of Branson's 'Summer of
Bubba,' the upcoming hedonistic hillbilly festival of
music, hog calling and nightcrawler gathering expected
to draw millions of Neckies from as far as Santa Monica
and Ithaca -- even Europe.
"Y'all, I heard them Swedish 'Necks
are hardcore," says Joe Don. "They digitally
remastered all the original Jerry Clower albums."
A live-for-today attitude permeates
the group's ethos, with little concern about consequences.
I ask Justin 'Jim Rob' Borowski, 18, what motivates
young men and women to abandon promising academic careers
in Gender Theory and Critical History to take a wild
ride in the dark world of roofing and drywall contracting.
"My daddy was sorta mad when I
tolt him I was gonna skip Columbia Journalism School
for a plumbing apprenticeship," he answer philosophically,
popping a plug of Red Man into his lip. "I tolt
him that journalism is important, but the world needs
plumbers too."
"After the toilet backed up, I
think he got my point."
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