"Redneck" and "cracker" are used almost interchangably and usually in a derogatory fashion.

But they are not one and the same thing although it is possible to be both a redneck and a cracker.

I most certainly am!

Now a lot has been said about what a redneck is or is not or what he is supposed to be.

But what is a "cracker?"

A native Georgian or Floridian - that's what!

We have worked this land; but, have seldom owned it - at least not on a piece of paper.

It has generally been someone from out of state, usually from "up north" who had his name on the deed to the land.

My great grandmother, Virginia, married one of these. After, his death, she fell in love with a "fieldhand." Her husband's family shot him and made her give up the child, my grandfather, who was given to a man who used him as farm labor until he was old enough to run away.

Not that he was able to find anything better. My grandfather was a lifelong turpentine worker.

It was dirty, backbreaking, dangerous work for which you were given a shack to live in and an "account" at the "company store." Everything you got at the company store was charged against your account; and, when "payday" came you were lucky if you didn't owe the store. The prices there were outrageously high for the time; but, you had no where else to go. It was the only store you had anywhere to get to. Besides, the "bossman" didn't pay you in cash. He let you trade it out at the "company store." And you were lucky that he paid you at all. You had no way of making him pay you. There were no unions back then and no minimum wage.

My mother would recall once hearing her mother beg her father not to take his shotgun and try to make the "bossman" pay up. Even if there was no food in the house and 6 hungry children, they would get by somehow! She would afraid that he would kill the man and be hung for it. My grandfather went anyway; and, the man paid up. It could have easily turned out very differently. Many similar stories did!

My father's father was a Methodist preacher ; but he was also a "dirt farmer" and he married the daughter of dirt farmers. They had small patches of land that wasn't very good land; but they managed to eek out survival on it; and, that is all it was - survival!

Some didn't survive. My father's only full siblings, a brother and sister died before he was born; and, His mother died soon after his birth. He contacted polio in 1905.

It is one thing to have polio when you are Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It is another thing to have polio when you are some poor kid out on a dirt farm. No access to an education, no access to medical care, no access to any way to make a living except through manual labor.

My father was more fortunate than many polio survivors however since the aftermath left him still able to walk; but one leg grew to be one inch shorter than the other; and, unable to buy special corrective shoes, he developed a special way of walking, on "tiptoe," which helped disguise his disability. Age and post polio syndrome finally put him in a wheelchair; but, at least he did have some years he could walk and earn a living, raise a family - including me.

Like life is tough all over!

So where is all this leading?