In honor of our esteemed ex-commenter John Randolf, a/k/a Porky, PiginaPoke, among other pseudonyms, I thought it would be nice to start out White Trash Wednesday with a little Holmes family background. (FYI, due to Randolf’s repeated fabrications and one-trick-pony-style name calling, he had to be shown the door – look for him at a different blog near you) Of course, you won’t be as impressed with the Holmes’ family background as you were with Gandolf’s lineage of patriotic greatness, but perhaps you’ll enjoy it just the same.

It all started when my great great Grandfather Rufus Egbert Holmes came over as a stowaway from Scotland on the legendary clipper ship the HMS Skunkbutter. He survived in a crate eating nothing but saltines, mustard seeds and rotting lettuce. The only air he enjoyed was what he could suck through a split in the wooden crate he called home. He passed his months on board shooting craps in his crate while drinking crude homemade alcohol he had smuggled on board.

Rufus wound up settling in Virginia, but fighting for the North in the Civil War. He wasn’t well educated on the war between the states, so he just picked up with the first band of troops that came through town. It was during one of his rampages that he fell in love with Dixie Ray Williams, an unattractive southern belle South Carolina-raised but North Carolina-at-heart. Rufus didn’t mind that she wasn’t entirely comely, because she was easy and had been passed around more than the pipe in General Grant’s mess tent. She didn’t just serve her country, she served her country.

They eventually produced my great Grandfather Victor Allenworth Holmes, who started working in a factory at age 8, producing goods in a textile mill at the dawn of the industrial revolution. He had as much pride in his country as he did the consumer goods he helped assemble on one of the world’s first conveyor belts.

He eventually headed west to find his fortune in the gold mines of the Yukon, but didn’t make it past the Mississippi River. He contracted typhoid fever during his stay near St. Louis, and spent a year battling the disease. He settled down with a young lady named Henrietta Boatright, who was not completely unattractive, but was still embarrassing to be seen with about town.

They built a home in the shadow of the St. Louis Arch, which was yet to be built, and produced a slew of unattractive children. One of these children wound up being my Grandfather, Reginald Ignacious Holmes, known to his schoolmates as “Slappy,” due to the number of times he got slapped around the schoolyard by a rabble of bullies.

Slappy always believed that he was part Jewish (though he wasn’t) and as such joined the U.S. Army to fight Hitler’s army during WWII. He never actually made it to the front, as by the time he made it through basic training the war was coming to a close. Not one to be turned away by circumstance, Slappy still managed to make it to Europe and contribute to the war’s cleanup. He had as much pride in his country as he did his janitorial contributions to the Marshall Plan.

Slappy came home and settled in the mountains of Kentucky, turning into hermit of sorts, only leaving his small house for trips to the General Store and to see his favorite tailor, Navin Ledbetter. It was during one of those trips that he met and simultaneously married Tammy Simpleton, a rugged mountain woman who spent most of her time hunting a variety of wildlife with nothing but a bowie knife and some rope.

They also had a batch of moderately unattractive children. Interestingly, as Slappy got older, he became even more fit and muscular, enabling him to still run a 7-minute mile to this day. You can still run into Grandpa Slappy at Ledbetter & Sons’ Family Tailors in Berea, Kentucky if you’re lucky.

Slappy’s third son, Orville Monroe Holmes married twice before finally conceding defeat and accepting his third marriage to exotic dancer Staci Patton. They, in turn, produced me, Preston Taylor Holmes, white trash blogger.

No, I wasn’t a blue-blood educated in Ivy League schools like John Randolf. I spent my formative years spirally-slicing hams for $4 an hour – when you’ve got to feed the family, you don’t have time for frivolity like college and graduate school. If it weren’t for my spell checker and typing assistant Randy, I wouldn’t even be able to type the very post you’re reading. I may be a white-trash blogger out of place in this brain-soaked blogosphere, but at least I’ve got white-trash pride. I may not be a blue-blood, but my blood runs red, white and blue. Mainly red, from what I’ve noticed after cutting myself.

Other bloggers celebrating White Trash Wednesdays:

• Beautiful Atrocities
• CrankyNeocon
• Daisy Cutter
• My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
• Nickie Goomba
• Rachael Ray Redux
• Riehl World View
• Vince Aut Morire

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