We subscribe to the local newspaper here on the Washington peninsula for two reasons: to read the police reports, and to line Buddy’s litter box with something sturdy and absorbent. We don’t have a lot of big headlines around here (”Kitten hides in tree, worries owners”), but I thought I would share with you some of the police reports. They’re not white trash postcards, per sé, but I think you’ll agree that they cannot fall under anything but the “white trash” heading:

“A woman arrived home at 9:38 am to find a man she had never met showering in her bathroom and making coffee in her coffee pot.”

“A Long Beach resident reported that a middle-aged woman was acting “drunk and strange,” shouting obscenities near a local bar. She then threw a Molotov cocktail at the sidewalk.”

“A local man reported an intruder in his garage Wednesday evening. He calmed the man down and invited him inside.”

“A woman was reportedly drunk and belligerent, lying on the sidewalk near the hardware store and refusing to move.”

I mean, you can’t MAKE UP stuff this awesome.

In our tiny town there are many seedy little hole-in-the-wall motels, but one in particular always stands out because of the messages they always have posted on their outdoor sign. Besides listing the always affordable price and the fact that they are “very clean,” they have written such enticing tidbits as “dogs stay free,” “clean sheets,” and sometimes just outright pleas for business, such as “we’re really very nice… please help us out!”

One of my personal favorites was last summer when the sign claimed they were “just like a Hilton.” I think this could only possibly be true if they were referring to Paris Hilton, and then I might agree that they’re similar… dirty, skanky, and wouldn’t want to hold a black light up to either of them.

The other evening on our way out to dinner we passed the sign, which offered the following:

(That last word is “crew,” by the way… our camera didn’t do so well at night).

I don’t know what they might need a crab crew for, but I can wager a guess. In a motel like this, the sheets are so sexed up that they’re slithering right off the beds themselves, in search of ovum. I guess “pubic lice crew” wouldn’t have fit on the sign.

Seeing as I hold a degree in English, make a living writing and editing, and am just an all-around uppity bitch, it makes sense that seeing words spelled incorrectly would bug me. Yes, I know I’ve let the occasional typo around here slip. I’m not perfect. Something I just CANNOT CONDONE, however, are signs being with spelling or grammatical errors. The way I figure it, at least two people have to see any given sign before it’s hung; the person who wrote it, and the person who made the sign. One would think that of the two, perhaps one of them might flag the error before it’s released upon the world.

A long time ago I mentioned a particular business whose sign was lettered with the wrong kind of “to” (of the “to, too, and two” trio). That business quickly disappeared, but has now moved to a new location, WITH A BRAND NEW SIGN THAT STILL HAS THE WRONG KIND OF “TO”. See for yourself:

Now, the white trash of the world certainly don’t have the market cornered on spelling errors (anyone who is at least my age can remember when a former vice president of the United States spelled “potato” wrong). But I think it must take a special kind of stupid to put up the wrong sign not once, but twice! Every time I drive by this particular business, it’s all I can do to not pull over and run screaming into the building, “YOUR SIGN HAS THE WRONG KIND OF ‘TO’ ON IT… IT SHOULD SAY ‘INTERNET TOO,’ AS IN ‘ALSO!!!!!’ AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!” Muffin assures me this would be a bitchy thing to do, but I tell you, I am this close.

The next sign posted for your viewing pleasure is not spelled wrong at all. In fact, I rather like it and that is why I’m posting it. The business in question promises to hem pants while you wait. I surely hope that person who composed it saw the innuendo, but regardless, it always gives me a smile when I see it:

I would also like to notify you of a white trash postcard UPDATE: The semi-orange house I posted a photo of a few weeks back has been completed and is now ENTIRELY orange, with purple trim. But one can’t really enjoy it though, what with all the scaffolding still surrounding the entire house, which I’m sure will still be there several months from now. Scaffolding on a one-story house? What can I say? It’s the beach.

Here on the Long Beach Peninsula, there’s lots of things we do well. Catching fish, for example. We are good at catching fish. Or making salt water taffy. No one, and I mean NO ONE can pull taffy like a coastie. But folks, curb appeal? It’s just not one of our strong suits. See for yourself:

Now, the resolution on this bad boy isn’t great, because I did a drive-by photo with my camera phone. But this house is ORANGE. Bright-ass, Halloween pumpkin, traffic cone, nothing-rhymes-with-orange ORANGE. And what sets off orange better than purple trim? Having an orange house with purple trim is bad enough, but in true white trash form, the paint job is, of course, only partially finished.

The pink plastic flamingo in the front yard apparently keeled over from sheer embarassment, not nearly as hearty in stock as the pink plastic flamingoes across the street:

These flamingoes are apparently gazing reverently at this fine abode in all its other-worldy, lime sherbet glory. Or maybe they’re checking out the strange animal bones strewn about the yard. Or the abandoned toilet, which appears to be acting as a planter box. It’s so hard to say! I don’t know about you, but I, for one, just LOVE the toilet-as-planter concept. It’s like they’re saying, “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if you looked into a toilet, and… get this… instead of seeing shit, you saw FLOWERS?”

The thing that makes these white trash postcards all the more, well, white trashy, is that both houses are right smack dab next to homes that in the last year have probably had $100,000 or more in renovations, and are very nice. Cedar siding, landscaped yards, no plastic aquatic animals sticking out of their well-manicured lawns.

Don’t they know that pink flamingoes are the new black?

I’ve added a new category here at Naturally Carolicious that I’m calling, “White Trash Postcards.” Why? Because the tiny town I live in just REEKS of trailer-park charm, so much so that I would be doing you all a disservice if I didn’t share a little bit of the magic. The image in today’s postcard has been bugging me for several weeks, so today when I was on my way home from running some errands, I did a quick drive-by photo. First, a little back-story. The photo below is of a home across the street from ours, two doors down. A few months ago a savvy flipper purchased the house, which was a tremendous eyesore and tear-down ready, complete with broken windows and boarded-up doors. In about six weeks time the flipper had completely gutted and re-sided the home, and the neighborhood rejoiced over the inevitable rise in our property value. But then, the flipper, well, they went and turned the home into a rental, and I suspect they’re not asking enough for their monthly payments:

What we have here is a classic white trash decorating technique, known as confederate drapes. I mean, any ol’ white trash can hang up blankets or towels in lieu of actual window treatments (and indeed, some of my neighbor’s other windows feature such), but it takes a SPECIAL BREED of white trash to hang a confederate flag in their window. But wait… dude has confederate drapes in THREE windows! These decorating concepts work best if you really go for it, I guess.

I have decided that people who continue to display confederate flags do so out of one of three ideologies:

1. White supremacy (let’s hope that’s not it).

2. A skewed, misguided love for the by-gone majesty of the old south, which includes sloe gin, ladies in hoop skirts on the front porch swapping pecan pie recipes, and sassy mammies who could birth a baby with one hand while making kick-ass barbecue with the other. Slavery! How charming!

3. The appeal of being a “redneck,” a la The Dukes Of Hazzard (General Lee sported a confederate flag paint job after all) and Larry the Cable Guy.

I suspect (and hope) that when people display the confederate flag it’s because of reason number three, that if you asked them what the significance of the flag was, they would say it was just a cool redneck accessory, and the thought that it’s considered a symbol of racism would not enter their minds. That would make them historically stupid, of course, but I suppose that’s better than being ethically bankrupt.

I would also like to point out that dude has at least one car on the property that, as far as we know it, does not run. But he needs it there because, upon closer inspection, his mutt dog lives in the backseat. No lie!

The truth. It’s often stranger than fiction, and in this case, WAY more entertaining.