Bill Hilly Effigy

A Really Sad Memoir about Poor People, for Rich People

Chapter 1. Poor People

Poor people are a tricky bunch. A different sort.

I should know. I used to be one.

It’s the smell that hits first.

Think a diaper of a four-year-old who’s eaten nothing but SpaghettiOs and Hot Pockets since Thanksgiving.

Think milk in the ashtray for the cat, but the cat never came near it, and people just kept using it for their cigarettes and fingernails.

Think a fridge where shame and baloney are crammed into the same cracked Tupperware container and shoved behind the pickle jars and expired salad dressing since childhood.

That’s the smelly America I grew up in. Good gravy, it’s bad.

That’s the part of America that Americans don’t understand.

Real America.

You probably think you have me pegged already, am I right?

Saturday with Maw and Paw.

RC Cola and a straw…

Sister Emma’s Big White Bra,

Something like that?

But you’d be wrong.

I’m not from D.C. No, I’m not even from Appalachia.

I’m from rural Wyoming. Sorry, that's redundant.

I’m from Wyoming.

Wyoming is just one of two dozen or so real Americas that really suck, and that you don’t know anything about. You can pile ’em up and sit on ’em — Good lordy, there are a lot of crummy Americas.

There’s the One, the Two, and the Three. And we’re still just countin’ the God fearin’ white ones.

But I’m pretty sure ours is the worst.

Even the socialists agree — ours is an America that’s been ingrained and unchanging since time immemorial. It goes back four, maybe even five generations, if you can believe that.

Now, I’m only about your son’s age, and like most Bill Hillies, I don’t have anything worth saying — even less so since I went to Princeton. But I’m gonna say it all the same, because folk like you need to hear what I don’t have to say.

You need to know how white folk can be just as low down and miserable as anyone and why.

You need to hear about this guy I knew — let’s call him Larry.

No — Ralphy. Let’s call him Ralphy.

You need to know about Ralphy, who knocked up his girlfriend, and ate my baloney sandwich, and didn’t even show up to work.

What the hell, Ralphy?

Hey! Ralphy! You’re what’s wrong with America!

But most of all, you need to know how important and profound a contribution a nobody like me can make if taught to read and write. And you need to think good and hard about if you want more us to read and write.

I’ve been there. I’ve seen the Rural America you’ve only seen depicted in paintings and featured in bookshop window displays.

I’ve stood on the front lines, and in the middle and at the back of lines too. In the plasma donation lines, and in the dollar store general lines, and in the discount movie ticket theatre lines. And I thought to myself: Damn, there’s a lot of lines. Look at all these line-standers. I’m too good to be standing in all these lines.

And because you stand in different lines, you don’t know about any of that. So it’s high time you hear about my upbringing and all the lines I had to stand in, and every last thing that almost say-uncled me to death.

But that was then. These days I’m what’s known as a Bill Hilly “A-Dog” around my parts.

You’ll just have to take my word for it when I tell you that people look at me, and all what I’ve been through, and all the poop I’ve flicked from my boots, and everything I’ve achieved, and they say, “Well pickle my nipples, if it ain’t the friggin’ Will Hunting of Mormonville here. You must be sumptin’ mighty special mister.”

They keep sayin’ it, and with all due respect, I wouldn’t wipe my Latter-day ass with that theory of a candy wrapper.

I’m no more special than the next Bill Hilly. The only difference is I showed up to work on time, I didn’t smoke meth, I went to Princeton, and I didn’t eat other people’s goddamn sandwiches.

And that’s the reason I wrote this book. To help people like you understand how a garbage person from the worst of the many heartlands of America can make it out.

That’s the reason you are reading this book. To learn the ways of Bill Hilly of the heartland.

First, America has lots of garbage heartlands.

But I’m talking about the lowest of the low.

Folk who aren’t worth even their discounted bus pass.

Hey, here’s a trivia fact for you: did you know the Scots-Irish are one of the most distinctive subgroups in America?

It’s true. I read it in a magazine. The guy who said it was Bangladeshi-American, and he knows about that kind of stuff.

The Scots-Irish. Now there’s a non-porous subgroup for you. Just compare that to all the other fuzzy groups we got milling about. The wishy-washy demographs are a dime a dozen in this great country — but not the Scots-Irish. No way.

But the truly exceptional exception? Who beats even the Scots-Irish?

Let me introduce you to your standard, Wyoming sometimes-temple-recommended member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — your classic Bill Hilly Jack Mormon.

All you East Coast elitist Bill Hillies look the same to us. As far as we’re concerned, Exotic Joe Exotic is just another frog-eating Frenchman with a big cat and a caffeine habit.

Where was I? That’s right. Why am I writing this book?

You might be wondering. Fair enough.

I’ll tell you. And don’t get me wrong. I don’t think I’m some kind of Bill-Hilly Little Prince, bestowing beautiful truths to you from another world. It’s just that you just don’t have a clue. And you need a sensitive Bill Hilly like me to help you out. And the pleasure is all mine.

First of all, the hard part is that for those of us who manage to wash the stink out of our clothes, the demons of flatulence are always still nearby — always trying to sit next to us at the Pioneer Day reenactment, no matter how many times you tell them that seat is taken.

How do you escape? It’s not easy. Just look out the window. The methheads stumble like the undead, and they are getting closer and closer with their bad teeth and open sores.

“Come with us, Billy,” they groan.

Don’t get me wrong. The temptation is powerful, given the nature of the Bill Hilly.

You have to reach down into all that trauma and abuse and turn that badness into good. But how? you demand. How?! How?! I keep telling you, that’s why I wrote this book. You’re only on the first chapter, for heaven’s sake.

Because this book is so much more than a field guide for understanding poor people. But it’s that too.

And it’s also much more than just the awesome story of a Bill Hilly and his humble rise from the refuse of America. But it’s that too, don’t get me wrong.

At its heart it’s a thank-you letter. A thank-you letter to the smell, and all the smells, that raised me.