Sustainable Community Archives - Page 4 of 9

5 Ways to Find Your Inner Redneck

April 20, 2012July 7, 2011 by David Mark Brown

Toilet seat horse shoes Folk who live the button down life in town (known as the “rat race” until this was seen as discriminatory to vermin) might need a little assistance in letting their mullet down. If that’s the case, here are five great ways to add a little redneck to your white collar world (the Green Porch is always doing its part):

Buy a brick of ammunition from Walmart to keep on top of the fridge (no gun necessary). Then whenever you open the door say the words, “Get some.” (For extra credit you can drink straight from the carton and wipe your mouth with the back of your hand.)
Read more5 Ways to Find Your Inner Redneck

Company Town: Two Faces of Thurber, TX

June 30, 2011 by David Mark Brown

By 1915 Thurber, TX existed as the largest producer of coal in Texas. It supplied a dozen railways with coal, paved much of the state with brick, and was the largest city along Interstate 20 between Ft. Worth and El Paso. And every bit of the town (from scratching post to hitching post, from pew to crapper) was company owned by Texas and Pacific Coal Company.

Yet by the 1930’s Thurber was gone, and its success began to unravel during the winter of 1921-22. At their peak, company towns across the nation hosted 3% of the population. But were these towns a blight? or progressive beacons? Was Thurber a bastion of enlightened industrialist Paternalism or a cesspool of oppressive and monopolizing Capitalism?

Born in a One Rib Hut Town

April 5, 2011 by David Mark Brown

The hierarchy of backwater, podunkville is directly related to its eateries. It is a verifiable fact (I’m assuming). Today’s mission is to record this hierarchy for posterity via the magical aether of the internets. At the smallest level of civilization there exists the “One Rib Hut” town.

BBQ Rib Hut

This is the sort of drive-by, espresso house urbanistas are accustomed to, except that it sells pulled pork by the pound and sides of red beans cooked in Guatemalan insanity peppers, rather than the brewed beans of the coffee sort (with smiley faces of foam on top). The rib hut doesn’t even technically need an incorporated town. It might simply sprout from a pasture somewhere with enough nearby pigs and cattle to keep it going.