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rural life: Stories from the farm.

Grunt and GrumbleWhy do men in the country talk that way?

By Jon Katz
Posted Monday, May 29, 2006, at 7:10 AM ET
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One spring morning, I stopped at Stewart's, the local convenience store, to get the New York papers and some coffee. I eavesdropped on the two guys in front of me as they poured enormous quantities of cream and sugar into their cardboard coffee cups.

Man in blue cap: "Hey."

Man in red cap: "Hey."

Blue Cap: "So, you still working over at—"

Red Cap: "Yup."

Blue: "You get your—"

Red: "Yeah, all fixed."

Blue: "I bet it was—"

Red: "More than two grand …"

Blue: "Ouch. So you lost—"

Red: " 'Bout a week. I'll be done Friday."

Grunt and Grumble is the language of rural life, the patois of builders and contractors, farmers and volunteer firefighters. It has the rhythms of a David Mamet play. Sentences go unfinished, assumptions are made, key words are savored, in a kind of incantation. Everyone understands everything everyone else is saying, or pretends to. Nothing is ever questioned or explained, unless somebody like me is there saying, "Huh?" and "What?" (Now that I've lived in the country awhile, I don't interrupt anymore. I just nod and mumble the occasional, "Yup.")

You have to stand a certain way when you Grunt and Grumble. It works best if your arms are folded. If you're thin, like my friend and champion G&Ger Anthony, you fold your arms and lean back. Most Grunt and Grumblers lean forward and rest their folded arms on substantial bellies. Either way, you take a wide stance, your legs two or three feet apart. This way guys battered by hard physical labor can Grunt and Grumble for many minutes, while easing back pain and the pressure on sore feet. When possible, Grunt and Grumblers also lean on trucks or tractors, as whiffs of testosterone and diesel fuel mix in roughly equal proportions.

I used to complain about all this wasting of time, until Anthony explained that Grunt and Grumble is not mere bullshitting or goofing off. It's essential to rural life: part news, part education, even part (shhh) support group. Friendships are formed, deals struck, information gleaned. Farmer A learns what Farmer C is paying for cows from Farmer B. Gossip is idle chatter. Grunting and Grumbling is business.

And also, part philosophy. Men in my upstate town rarely engage in deep emotional discussions about their anxieties. Yet they have real fears: rising taxes and the brutal toll of high gas prices; the difficulties of finding skilled workers in a region where the young tend to flee; the unpredictable turns of the marketplace. (After Katrina the price of lumber shot way up, increasing the cost of construction, making everyone unhappy.) All of that emerges, sometimes in code, in these conversations.

Sessions usually last 10 to 15 minutes—I've been timing them—until one guy either looks at his watch and seems shocked at the time ("Oh, jeez, the wife will think I'm dead") or offers an abrupt, "Well, yup." A man may raise both his hands to announce an end to the conversation. Sometimes there's a coda: "That well ain't gonna get dug in here, is it?"

Grunt and Grumble can erupt spontaneously and almost anywhere. Construction sites where guys can stop by to inspect and chat are popular venues. But you can most reliably find it at places like Stewart's, the hardware store, or any other place that sells tools. Once I grasped this, certain local behaviors made more sense. I'd puzzled, for example, about why Anthony drove to Stewart's for his morning juice and bagel when his wife, Holly, had the same breakfast menu at home. Then, joining him one morning, I understood.

He heads for Stewart's about 7 a.m, with his ride-along dog, a genial black Lab. Leaving the dog in the truck cab and waiting in Stewart's for his bagel to toast, Anthony launches into abbreviated G&G with the other men picking up coffee and eggwiches. "Hey, you hear they shut down work on the Cooper place because there's no permit?" This leads to intense muttering about county building inspectors. Also, Jamie got a $140 ticket for speeding and for having no lights or license on his trailer. This item prompts an exchange of data on current speed traps. Further, there are reports that somebody in Dorset wants to sell a few tons of gravel. Anthony collects his bagel and juice and leaves, exchanging brief macho banter (just poking and kidding on the fly, different from true Grunt and Grumble) with two or three guys.

Early-morning G&G is brief; everyone wants to get going, get to work. Further grumbling comes later, interspersed during long, tiring days. From my observations, Grunting and Grumbling ceases around 4 p.m. The men are tired, and it's time to clean up, get home, eat dinner, play with the kids, and rest.

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Jon Katz's latest book is Izzy and Lenore: Two Dogs, An Unexpected Journey, and Me. His Web site is www.bedlamfarm.com.
Photograph by Peter Hanks.
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Remarks from the Fray:

I grew up in town this article is referencing. Today, I live about 45 minutes away, and still spend a lot of times with friends who are now running family farms.

I just wanted to toss it out there that, like most people, my friends don't fall into a pigeon hole. In response to the article, a lot of young people aren't leaving town in some sort of mass exodus. Sure a lot leave town for college and leave for a job. I, for example left for a software engineering job. Plenty don't leave though, take on the family farm or business, and if all things go well will pass it on to their children. They do have lives and intelligence outside of the farm though. [...]

Most of the younger farmers I know (20-40 yrs old) are liberals. These are no weekend farming warriors, and most are up busting there asses while the rest of us are still comfortable in bed. Farmers, at least in this area, tends to follow economics far more than ideology. [...]

A lot of this has to do with the fact that the place the author is located in is about 30 minutes from Vermont on one side, and 30 minutes from Saratoga Springs, a summer playground for NYC, on the other. This area is very rural, but far from isolated, and it's important to view the two separately. It's day to day interactions with all different people of all different political leanings that has led to a greater openness than would be found in areas that are nothing but rural for huge distances. Communication is a great destroyer of ignorance, and I'm proud to have lived in an area where I could benefit from both a rural upbringing and witness a great variety of people and ways of life.

--Phojo11

(To reply, click here.)

Holy cow, Katz done figgered out the Bubba Code, that sometimes when we're a-talkin', we're actually exchangin' facts and idears! [...]

Joking aside, Katz' article is patronizing and rife with cliches about rural life. 'Red cap, blue cap'? 'substantial bellies'? Not to mention the big cliche of the Outsider Who Finally Learns The Ways of the Village, with instruction from a Savvy Insider. [...]

These kinds of conversations go on in all areas of life, whether at the water cooler, the local diner, the convenience store, etc. In point of fact, in pretty much every place that you have human beings and language.

He seems to look at the other members of his community the way that Dian Fossey looked at lowland gorillas. The telling point is that he's surprised that his neighbors are actually having constructive and valuable conversations -- which implies that, before he learned Da Bubba Code, he thought they were just time-wasting morons.

--oblio

(To reply, click here.)

Farmers in the upper midwest, particularly farmers of Scandinavian descent, speak in a shorter form of grunt and grumble. I won't try to describe it here, since there are almost no words involved, and it wouldn't mean anything without being able to hear the accent. See the movie "Fargo" for a reasonable facsimile.

Whenever someone would go on at length and offer up extensive explanations or opinions, there would be a long pause after the garrulous one had left the room. Finally, someone would break the silence with the inevitable, "Oofdah! She's a talker, that one."

--Arlington2

(To reply, click here.)

Just reading this article made me smile. I have lived in the country all my life and would have it no other way. The writer said sometimes he was confused by the speak, well I don't know how many times I've listened to people in big cities talk, esp New York on tv. Half the time they are going on about some philosopy and abstract idea and I have no clue what it means.

This is not to say that rural= stupid rednecks. The country has all kinds, but the atmosphere tends to be the same, more laid back, people knowing one another, and so on. Hollywood tends to portray ALL people in the country as being stupid rednecks that sleep with their relatives. Many, many times I have sat down to watch a movie and been disgusted with this. I know a lot of highly intelligent people, not so intelligent, and yea, some a little on the slow side. Still, I would never live in the city. To loud, to noisy and to dirty. (I won't go into the price of living!)

--Marie34

(To reply, click here.)

Guys living in urban cities and/or blue states "grunt and grumble" too.

Except instead of saying "yeh, yup, man, nah" they say "I hear ya", "hear ya (short)", "I herd", "dude", "man", "I hear you bra", "ya herd", "aight", "true that", etc. At least the rural version is more efficient (though not by much). Grunting and grumbling is pretty universal. Except doing it the urban way is more "hip".

--senbassador

(To reply, click here.)

(5/30)

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