This might be true outside of the redneck community as well but the only community I really have any experience with in my life is my own. I will readily admit that I am not a global person and I don't really know a great deal about what happens in other walks of life.
Would I like to be more global? Honestly, not really because I am quite content where I am and the few times I have attempted to go on some lavish location in some far away place I just ended up spending a ton of money and didn't enjoy myself anywhere near as much as I would have liked to.
There is one thing I noticed the other day when I was speaking to the the boys down at our almost nightly Elks Lodge meetup. I don't even remember how it came up but it seems as though most of our families are pretty nuclear and most of the members of our families get married, have kids, and stay that way. But there is always that one uncle that either had a go at getting married or just never did so. They also tend to be really big, very happy people who shower their nieces and nephews with attention and gifts when they are around.
I had a bunch of uncles because my mother was the only female in a family with 7 children. Lynn was the youngest of all the siblings and I would imagine his sense of humor was passed down from all the other kids, who are also quite humorous. Lynn though, was quite a lot closer to us kids' ages when we were growing up, so he was a lot more involved with us as far as playing silly games were concerned.
In the years that I have known Lynn, he was rarely serious and he was always cracking silly jokes, calling us nicknames that were funny and meant to be insulting but were also very rated PG. I think my nickname to him was "worm."
Now while Lynn wasn't always this way, as he got older he didn't really do anything to keep himself in shape and he got rather enormous. He did get married and still is so he isn't exactly the kind of fat jolly uncle that I am talking about here, but he got married rather late in life. All of my youth knowing him he was a single man and even though he had to be serious somewhat in his professional life, he was NEVER serious around us kids when we would visit.
To this day even though I am now in my 40's and Lynn is in his 60's, he still has this very animated sense about himself when he comes around or whenever I see him. He lives quite a ways away so I don't see him all that often. He no longer buys me gifts but up until I was around 16 or so he would always turn up with big hugs and give me and my brothers and sisters a little something: normally candy.
The reason why I bring that up as far as the redneck circle of life is concerned is because of the fact that I believe that I have become the "big jolly uncle" of my own family circle. I never got married by choice and while I am not fat, I am big and whenever I see my brother and sister's kids I have become the silly one that turns up with little gifts for them. They seem to be genuinely happy to see me the same way that we were to see Lynn back in the day.
I never viewed Lynn as a loser but I am sure other segments of society did. I can only imagine that some members of society see me as the same. I didn't care when it was Lynn and I also dont care if it happens to be me now either.
Lynn is still alive and kickin and although he has a lot of responsibilities including a daughter who is now married, he never lost his funny edge. The last time I saw him was a while ago and I was around him for about 20 minutes before he could see that I was bored and he leaned in and said "you wanna go get into some redneck shit?" This entailed him picking up a cooler of beer and then driving through fields in his jacked up pickup truck. We got airborne on multiple occasions. Don't worry, we hadn't yet drank any of the beer and the land belonged to him.
I hope Lynn never loses this edge...