Poverty, Riches, and Hillbillies

As I was building a roof rack for my Suburban today, I couldn't help but laugh to myself. You see, we are getting ready to go on a trip to visit family. I am checking the suburban over and trying to figure out how I'm going to haul all our stuff. It isn't so much the stuff I'm hauling TOO the relatives but the stuff I will be hauling BACK! I have a larger than average family with 5 kids and they always get mountains of gifts from Grandparents. This will be our late Christmas trip so I must prepare. Anyhow, having such a large family means I have to so often use my imagination and some redneck engineering. A large family means that sometimes (OK, almost always) you must do things on a budget. Because of this, we often end up looking like the Beverly Hillbillies. So I am building this luggage rack out of some odds and ends I found around my house. This consists of some old bed frames, some round tubing, and some concrete reinforcement re bar. Trying to do it as quickly as I can, I'm not spending lots of time making nice welds, even cuts, perfect square corners, or nice paint jobs. My wife comes into the mans domain where I am building and says, "What is that?!" I say, "It is our new roof rack." She says, "Whats wrong with the space pod?" (The space pod is the roof luggage carrier that resembles a space craft) I say, "Nothing dear, we will be using that too." I can tell by her voice that she isn't impressed with my creation. I thought about wrapping it in Duct Tape to look like a Red Green invention. So we will go on our trip with what looks like a bed on the top of our car to carry luggage in. Other times I've carried motorcycles and ATVs on the top of our cars and trailers and many other hillbilly looking methods. I'm beginning to think that maybe we ARE hillbillies! After all, I don't have any desire to seek after riches, drive fancy cars, make big house payments, use lots of credit cards, etc. In fact, my desires are to get off the grid, stay debt free, and live in Alaska. I do my best to live a backwoods simple life. I raise my kids to be the same way. I burn wood for all our heat, we butcher 90% of our own meat, turn off the TV for long periods of time, I keep our trips to town down to a minimum, home school, build buildings like in the picture, carry a rifle and/or handgun where ever I go, and many other hillbilly things. Funny thing is, I feel like I'm the richest man alive. Some would call me poor because I sometimes look poor. I don't mind, how I look to others makes no difference to me. A week ago two of my sons and I had rented a table at a gun show and one evening after it was over for the day we went out and got into our vehicle with an odd colored door and numerous dents. Next to us where numerous fancy new pickups along with high payments. One son says, "We might look like hillbillies but I bet we are better off than most of these other people. Not too many people of your young age have the means that you have." I was proud that what I have tried hard to teach was getting through. You see, we have tried hard to stay debt free and sometimes you don't always look like everybody else. I've done the high payment thing with houses and cars. It just isn't worth it. My cars are paid for, my house is paid for, my clothes are paid for, and my latest kid is almost paid for. I get to watch my kids grow up, I get to spent lots of time with them, my marriage is good after 18 years, our health is good, and we are happy. Man, if this is what being a hillbilly is, than give me more! You see, riches are so much more than just money, and poverty is so much more than just a lack of money. And that my friends, is today's lesson.

Pictures are family meat butchering, building a hillbilly building, and a nice Montana sunset.