A REDNECK CHRISTMAS CAROL (1997)

Balladeer’s Blog’s Sixteenth Annual Christmas Carol-a-Thon continues with this new review.

A REDNECK CHRISTMAS CAROL (1997) – Written by John Yow & T. Stacy Helton and illustrated by David Boyd this is a reasonably funny adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Think of the type of jokes that Jeff Foxworthy was telling back when this book came out and you’ll know what to expect.

And speaking of Jeff Foxworthy, the illustrations for his You Might be a Redneck If … series of books had artwork from the same David Boyd who worked on this item. The redneck jokes in A Redneck Christmas Carol are not vicious and are told with a certain charm. 

EUBIE SCROOD, the main character of this adaptation, owns and operates Eubie’s Bait and Tackle Shop near Lake Water Moccasin. Everyone in Sand Mountain, AL considers Scrood to be cheap and mean-spirited.

Scrood’s partner Jake Marley had died a few years earlier but one and all continued to patronize the bait and tackle shop because of its incredible inventory of goods over and above just bait, lures, lines and poles. The book tells us “you could get snuff, nickel hard-boiled eggs, beer, a muffler for a Ford pick-up (years ’82 to ’89), loaf bread and motor oil all in one quick stop.”

BOBBY CRATCHET is Eubie Scrood’s employee at the shop. As you would expect, he is repeatedly harangued by Mr. Scrood, especially for letting a customer who owes a lot of money try to pass off their home-grown vegetables to pay their bill.

We readers get a redneck-ified version of the “You’ll be wanting all day tomorrow, I suppose” exchange of dialogue before Bobby goes home to his six kids. Among those children is Tiny Timmy, who suffers from a hookworm infection in the darkest joke of the book.

THE CHARITY COLLECTORS are Deacon Fritz and Deacon Weaver from the Pentecostal Church. The slick, pious men ask Scrood for a donation when they catch him in front of the Tastee Freez on his walk home.

This presents Eubie with the opportunity to decline their request with a 20th Century version of Scrooge’s ugly remarks about charity in the Dickens novel.

*** Sadly, there is no Nephew Fred character in this book.

JAKE MARLEY’S GHOST, with a John Deere cap on his head, shows up at Scrood’s mobile home in a trailer park. We get no door knocker bit, but Jake’s head does appear on a wall-mounted trophy display as if Marley is the head of a deer that Scrood shot.

Instead of chains and cash-boxes, the full-bodied Marley is tangled up in fishing line as a nod to the Scrood and Marley Bait and Tackle Shop as their way of making money. The ghost warns Eubie about the danger of sharing his fate and about the three visitors, then leaves.   

THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PAST is a stereotypical overweight redneck woman in hair curlers and glasses, smoking cigarette after cigarette. She shows Scrood his 1960 job digging up earthworms for fishing bait alongside his friend Jake Marley in Chattanooga, TN.

Next, she shows Eubie a few years later, when he and Jake stole wood from the site of a church under construction to build their first bait and tackle shop. We also get the bit where Scrood’s pursuit of nothing but money prompts his lost love Darlene Dobbins to dump him. She goes on to great happiness with a roadie for country singer Ernest Tubb just like Belle has a better life without Scrooge in the novel.   

*** There’s no Fezziwig character in this adaptation, nor a Dick Wilkins character.

THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PRESENT is Elvis Presley in full regalia, cape and all. Amid the expected jokes about peanut butter & banana sandwiches and the like, this ghost shows Scrood how loving Bobby Cratchet and his family are despite their grinding poverty. 

The narration describes Bobby’s ramshackle home with its broken shutters, tarpaper roof and rusting, tireless automobile up on cinder blocks in the front yard. Mrs. Cratchet complains about her man’s employer, of course. Elvis/ the Ghost imparts the usual lessons to Scrood before leaving him behind.

THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS YET TO COME is a figure clad in the expected black robe and cowl, but wearing a Jimmy Carter Halloween mask for a face. This future Christmas section of the book is the most poorly handled. Rather than center on a dead Scrood being unmissed and unmourned, the narration dwells on Ham Hammond, a business rival of Scrood’s whom we are seeing in person for the first time.

Ham’s corpse lies crushed under one of the cars in his automobile graveyard, a car which toppled over on him from the top of its pile. And rather than dead Scrood getting his possessions stolen, Scrood himself is shown stealing the Mag wheels off the GTO which crushed Ham.

*** We get no Old Joe, no scene acknowledging Tim’s passing nor the businessmen who don’t care about Scrood’s death. Eubie’s guilt over his future self scavenging off a dead man finalizes his repentance, we get the “shadows of things that will be or that might be only” bit and the ghost leaves.

THE MORNING AFTER features Scrood back in bed as usual for this part of the story. There’s no little boy below a window so Eubie asks a neighbor outside her own mobile home what day it is. Her reply is “What dad-blamed day you think it is, fool? It’s Christmas Day.”

A joyous Scrood makes amends with his enemy Ham Hammond, writing off his debt in exchange for a smoked turkey that Ham has in his barn. Next, Eubie delivers the turkey and a bunch of the candy from the bait and tackle shop to the Cratchet home.

BOBBY’S REWARD features him and his family enjoying this uncharacteristically bountiful Christmas. Scrood also tells Bobby he’s making him his partner in the business with the accompanying increase in pay.

A Redneck Christmas Carol peppered in some fun items throughout the book that played to its theme. Instead of telling Marley’s Ghost “there’s more of gravy than of grave about you”, Scrood refers to “bad mayo in that tuna-fish sandwich.” And instead of his nightgown, Eubie is wearing a NASCAR racer Richard Petty T-Shirt.

And for the finish of this comical Dickens adaptation we get the line “May the good Lord bless ever’ durn one of us.”  

FOR DOZENS MORE VERSIONS OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL CLICK HERE:   https://glitternight.com/category/a-christmas-carol-2/