As a child, I lived with my parents in "suburbia," or maybe "rural," depending upon your perspective. We were in a small, new home development, but I was a grown man before the street was finally paved and they had an address other than "Rural Route #2, Box 351." I had an uncle who I lived with through 6th grade (for the fun of it, per my parents). My uncle was a redneck, and that terminology is high praise. He was a hog farmer, an oil well rig hand & oil well owner, a Federal prison guard, a deacon at the local Methodist church, and a very avid hunter and fisherman, all at the same time. I think he lived outdoors. Somehow, in his "spare" time, he found (or made) time to take me fishing, gave me a dog, bought me a bicycle, and we went to church on Sunday, regardless of what went wrong any other day. Church was a 3 block walk away, and the post office a block the other way. One gas station in town.
My uncle loved me and I him. My best childhood memories have Uncle **** in the middle of them. There was a deep freeze on the back porch that you could have fit a small car into (lengthwise). There was beef, pork, chicken, turkey, pheasant, quail, venison, elk, squirrel, rabbit, trout and I'm not sure what else in that locker. They kept a small white porcelain bowl on the dining room table. If you're eating dinner and you bite down on a piece of lead shot, just pass the bowl, spit the shot out and keep eating. Looking back, I'm not sure if he would have known what a "vacation" was, but I think his life was well lived, and he was most certainly well thought of in that small town. I think most people in the town came to his funeral, and my children saw me cry that day.
