Triumph of the Trailer Trash

I was raised on a poor dirt farm in Eastern Oregon, sixty acres of skinny cows, sagebrush and sand. I was hoeing and milking and driving farm trucks by the age of nine, a hired hand. We were dirt poor. One of the strongest memories of my childhood was the day the lineman came to shut off our electricity one summer. When I was ten my father parked a truck in Prosser, Washington. We had five loads of watermelons to sell, a summer's work of hard labor that had raised blisters on our backs, and now the crop was ready and it was time to cash in. He told me I could eat dinner in the restaurant across the street, and that I should sleep in the truck. He had to go to The Dalles with another load. This one was left to me.

In two days I made $163 selling watermelons three for a dollar. This was 1965, when gas was twenty nine cents a gallon and a hamburger was twenty nine cents. I kept the money in a paper sack under the bench seat of the truck, a beat down old Chevy with rusted paint. On the third day the Prosser cops came and asked me where my parents were. They took me to the station and filled out a bunch of forms, and drove me to juvenile hall. I spent the night in solitary detention. There was a stack of magazines on a bench, Boy's Life and Sports Illustrated, and when I grew tired of reading I kicked the walls. The next day a caseworker drove me the 55 miles home.

We were trailer trash, pure and simple. We didn't live in a trailer, not literally, just a rundown two bedroom farm house, three kids to a bed. My grandfather built us a shotgun third bedroom on one of his vacations. My mother had another child, my sister Monika, the same year. All the younger ones were towheads. One year we were so poor at Christmas my parents cut down a shrub from the backyard. My parents were all was fighting and making up. He left home for months at a time. He drove long haul truck and worked construction. One summer she and a woman she knew were going through some boxes he left behind, and found a box of condoms. Six children and he took condoms with him on the road. Eastern Oregon winters are bitter cold, not Midwest cold, but the wind bites right through you. The house was always filled with tension and uncertainty. It had sawdust insulation, and mice. My mother cried to herself. I'd find her in the kitchen, muttering and distressed, speaking German. "Mama, what's wrong?" "Nothing. Go back to bed."

This morning the British Open is on as I write this, and John Daly is the early leader at minus five. Daly has had a tumultuous life, four wives, alcoholism, drunken brawls and embarrassing run-ins with the PGA brass. He squandered a fortune in tournament winnings and got fat and lost his swing. He went dry and fell off the wagon and made comebacks and vowed to give up golf altogether, lost his tour card and got into tournaments only on past victories and with sponsorship exemptions. He was suspended, fined, ridiculed and broken. He cut a country album and chain smoked and hit a drive off a beer can. He shot 84s and 63s, sometimes within weeks of each other. He missed cuts and had loud, embarrassing scenes with enraged gold digger wives, losing millions to bad judgment and free spending and excess and dissipation, making a mess and wreck and a laughing stock of himself. He wasn't cut out for success. He couldn't manage himself, take advice, or overcome his demons. He was Tonya Harding in golf cleats. And now this morning he leads the British Open at five under.

I have a soft spot for the John Dalys of the world, the guy in crazy pants guzzling Diet Dr. Cokes and trying to keep his head right. It would tickle me to see him hold it together for the weekend and thumb his nose at his critics, bring the Claret Jug back to Arkansas and conquer his chaotic nature once and for all. For all I know he could flame out by Friday afternoon. Wouldn't it be something, though, if he could do it? After all the hoopla over Tiger Woods and his sordid story and 750 million dollar divorce, to have the trailer trash from Arkansas steal the storyline and the show? Wouldn't that be delicious? That would tickle me to no end. Go John, go. Keep your mind quiet and grip it and rip it. I can't wait to see what happens next.

I'll be one hick rooting for another. If I won that kind of money I'd get my teeth fixed and throw a party. That's what trailer trash do.