For too long science has overlooked the hillbilly. Perhaps fearing being tied to a tree and molested, anthropologists and sociologists have eschewed the deep woods, failing to draw back the mosquito net of secrecy that still obscures this remarkable tribe.
Scratch the surface of the hillbilly, and we find little rolls of dirt andm traces of antifreeze under our fingernails. Wash the surface and then scratch, and we find the story of humanity itself.
Hillbillies know nothing of borders or of stifling modernity. They know nothing of anonymous urban sprawl. They know nothing of income tax and credit cards. They know nothing of dental hygiene or spelling. They know nothing of their immediate ancestry. But who needs the book-learning and chompers when one’s empire extends from the termite- infested porch of this little life to the tree-line of eternity? Certainly, the truck-on-bricks of failure, rusting next to the long-drop of disappointment, is a concern to those living the examined hillbilly life; but look away to the sunset, where all the world’s treasures flutter on the washing line of opportunity! Life is beautiful.
Until now the history of the hillbilly has been vague, owing to his inability to remember where he was 48 hours ago, but it is a history spanning all times and cultures. San folklore tells of the !Yi-Ha clan (translates roughly as ‘marry sister live in hole in the ground”), who would trek for a fortnight across the Karoo to borrow half a calabash of milk for the baby, with promises to pay it back in monthly installments.
The Sioux tolerated the shaman trances of the notorious slacker Squats With Beavers, stuffing wampum in their ears as he plucked at a ukulele with his one good tooth; medieval Holland was a reluctant home to the Schtoepkakkers of the Schtinkvoet swamps. French hillbillies, called montguy, established Gallic sanitary habits that endure today. In Germany they were called Swiss, and given their own country in the mountains to the south.
Times have changed, and hillbillies are losing their heritage. George W Bush and Michael Moore, hell-bent on proving each other to be white trash, simply have no way of knowing that they are in fact distant cousins, illegitimate great-grandsons of Reverend Cletus Gomorrah Chewknuckle of Anus County, West Virginia.
But in one flyblown corner of the world, hillbillies still flourish in virgin squalor: Greece. It takes an extraordinary race of no-accounts to invent Western civilisation and, 4 000 years later, to have only some kebabs to show for it: this is backwoodsy sloth at its most undiluted, a failure of ambition of epic dimensions. Athens is anthropological gold dust.
Anglo-American antiquity worshippers have prettied up their history and culture, but some stains run too deep. Who else but hillbillies would wage war naked, or go home from discussions on the planets to a prepubescent male concubine? You can call ouzo whatever you want, but moonshine is moonshine. And as for bouzouki music, two words: banjos, Deliverance.
Given all of this, last weekend’s news from Athens shouldn’t have surprised one. According to the Telegraph, the Olympic committee (pop, mom, brother-dad and sister-aunt) have decided to poison the city’s 15 000 stray dogs, because ‘the sight of packs of dogs roaming the streets will harm Greece’s image”.
Call me elitist, but any city stalked by packs of strays has bigger worries than its image. Like the safety of its pensioners and toddlers, for starters. Ari, won’t you be a dear and nip across to make sure old Mrs Nikolaides hasn’t been dragged out of her wheelchair again and isn’t being eaten under a bridge?
The article didn’t name specific breeds, so we might be talking about 15 000 feral Maltese poodles, ripping out the throat of anyone who tries to shift them off a comfy lap. But once a mountain-man decides to poison something, be it a raccoon or a New York property developer or his own liver, there’s no stopping him, and the dogs of Athens are doomed.
Those entrusted with Greece’s image have surely considered the prospect of thousands of dogs scattering into subways and unfinished stadia to choke to death on their own blood. Perhaps it is an image that evokes in them some kind of nostalgia.
And in the next weeks, as the Olympic city lays out lethal treats, Athenian dogs will come to fear Greeks, especially when they bring gifts.