Dr. Verne's Northern White Trash Etiquette - Softcover

The name’s Dr. Verne Edstrom Esq. This here’s my book.

You’re probably wondering how wholesome Northern White Trash like me got to be a famous book author, hanging around Deep Literary Guys who drink bottled water and don’t even own tool belts.

Well, since you asked, this here’s the story:

I was born in St. Cloud, Minnesota, which is over by Wisconsin and Canada. Like most decent Northern White Trash, I got a good upbringing.

My ma worked at the quarry and had a sweet AFDC scam going on the side, which taught me good finance at an early age. The old man, he had a union job for about three months when I was six. But mostly he burglarized chicken farms so he could pickle the eggs and sell ‘em to bars.

The family estate was the envy of St. Cloud. We had a double-wide on 40 acres and more refrigerators on our porch than anybody in town. Some folks might say we was well-to-do.

That’s how I got me this prestigious education. I graduated third in my class at the Red Wing Boys Reformatory, which people from them parts will tell you is the Harvard of the Minnesota juvenile correctional system. I also attended the Stillwater State Pen, where I majored in pipefitting.

My first wedding was to Alice. I met her while robbing a Denny’s one day. You never seen a woman look finer emptying a cash register, her great big hair glistening like a clump of jewels. It looked so sweet I figured it might be worth something at the pawn shop. Problem was, I couldn’t get it unattached from her head.

As it turns out, me and Alice got to sparking and next thing you know we’s married with four or six kids — I can’t remember which.

But then Alice run off with my brother Hal, who only got one ear cuz the other got bit off by a Northern Pike in an ice fishing accident. I figured Alice felt sorry for him. That’s why I only tried to shoot Hal once.

Then I got married to Karicia, who got a bad name but a good body. She was what you call your performing artist. Guys still remember her show over at the Palomino Club.

Karicia wasn’t partial to having no kids, which is why we only ended up with three. But then I caught her with this guy Sammy in the Palomino men’s room. I was pissed, seeing as how he wasn’t even kin. So’s I smacked Sammy with a towel dispenser.

Well, the blood got to flowing and Karicia got to squealing like a lawyer with a scraped knee. So I went home, grabbed the young ones, and headed for Bemidji, which is known near and far as the World Headquarters of the Northern White Trash Nation.

Anyways, I raised them kids right. Taught ‘em all my worldly knowledge, like how to hotwire snowmobiles and poach deer.

But then I got to figuring the kids needed one of them feminine presences around, someone to teach ‘em the fineries of life, such as how to cook a decent pot pie. So I got hitched to Marcie.

If a guy was being charitable, you could say Marcie is a fine looking woman — kind of a female Louie Anderson, only with more facial hair.

But me being the sensitive, nurturing kind, I can say with a true heart that it wasn’t looks I was after.

Nope, I first got to sparking with Marcie when I seen her win the wood splitting contest at Lumberjack Days. She had the muscles of a beer truck driver. Which meant I could branch out into stealing sofas, on account of them hide-a-beds is damn heavy, so you need a partner with decent pipes.

Marcie was a Christian woman. She never used the Lord’s name in vain unless she was drunk or shot herself with a nail gun. But she wasn’t partial to my thieving ways.

So I upped and faked a back injury.

Soon I was dipping my beak in that sweet nectar of workers’ comp. But like they say in them Hallmark cards, "Life has a way of sticking a shiv in your gut sometimes." Next thing you know, them pointy-heads from the state says I gotta join one of them retraining programs.

So I got to enrolling in the Northern White Trash Studies doctorate program at Bemidji State University. Eleven years later, out comes Dr. Verne Edstrom Esq.

Down in Des Moines, there was this sissy newspaper called Cityview. They was squawking about their affirmative action, seeing as how they had lots of guys with Caesar hairdos and nose rings, but no decent white trash.

So they give me this column called Dr. Verne’s Northern White Trash Etiquette. It works like this: Morons write me letters about how they got problems. Then I offer scientific advice, which I mostly just make up. It provides what you call your valuable service.

See, most white trash self-help is geared for them Southerners, who’s the lesser of the white trash species. They need basic self-help, like how to operate a can opener or ways to make their 11-year-old cousin unpregnant.

The Northern Trash is more refined. We got union jobs and don’t sleep with immediate family. We can hold our liquor and hardly ever shoot each other unless it’s important. We need more sophisticated advice, like tips on scamming bookies or who we should kidnap if we’re aiming to impress a woman.

Problem is, the decent Northern White Trash wasn’t getting no self-help. I wanted to give something back to the community. Which is how I got me this book.

If you ain’t buying that explanation, here’s a better one: I got eight or ten kids. Seeing as how Marcie’s built like a longshoreman, the smart money says she’s good for a half-dozen more. So if you don’t buy my book, I don’t get no money, which means eight to ten kids is gonna be loose on the streets, stealing your car stereo.

And any moron knows a book is cheaper than a car stereo. That’s just good financial thinking.