With no offense implied or otherwise, I must describe what people in Missouri call "Hoosiers." Bear in mind, would you, that I have close relatives from Indiana. My father was born and raised in Mitchell Indiana. His father was the superintendent of schools for Mitchell. I know what Hoosier means to folks from Indiana. In Missouri, and for the rest of middle America, it means something altogether different. To explain it to my Indy relatives and others not from around here, it is to say something like redneck or trailer trash. Not exactly yokel, hick or hillbilly as those monikers imply something more like country or backwoods. Redneck also is a little disingenuous as that term originated to describe farm folk who got their red necks from tending to their fields and livestock all day.
Mo Hoosiers, or for the sake of this discussion, let’s just call them hoosiers, are not country folk. You can find hoosiers anywhere. If you were looking for them in days gone by, you would find them at Wal-Mart or Kmart on a Saturday morning. More recently, you are more apt to find a very integrated melting pot of shoppers at any suburban Wal-Mart at any time of any day of the week. You would recognize the females by the muffin top sticking out of their Lee jeans or the three inches of ashy heel hanging over the back of their gold lame flip flops. The males are a little harder to distinguish because they come camouflaged, literally. I titled my blog Suburban Rednecks even though I really wanted to call it Suburban Hoosiers because I wanted to attract more than just people with IU stickers in the back windows of their grocery getters.
Now to the topic of the day, "How to build a hoosier hot tub." I am lucky enough to have access to all that is needed to design and build a hoosier hot tub. The key component to the design is the internet. The internet, wonderful 'invention' that it is, delights in providing people with directions on creating things they would otherwise spend thousands of dollars purchasing for themselves. My husband is a connoisseur of internet research. His penchant for googling useless knowledge is outweighed only by his imagination of what he could build. His desire to make internet purchases is limited solely by the balance in our checkbook.
He had often spoken of how we could have a hot tub without having to spend several thousand dollars of my hard earned cash. We looked at them at the home show and occasionally popped in to local showrooms. One day, waiting for one of his clients to call with a problem for him to solve, he started seriously researching the subject. He viewed several plans, most involved tall wooden structures popular in Sweden and Denmark. Then he settled on something doable. He found plans for making a hot tub from a cattle trough. Yes, I mean a Rubbermaid stock tank used to water livestock. In suburbia, you are more likely to see these buried, unrecognizably in someone’s yard disguised as a Koi pond.
Lucky enough for Jeff, stock tanks are fairly easy to come by near suburban St Louis, MO. We are surrounded closely enough with property big enough to have horses, sheep, goats, pigs and even cattle that a wide variety of farm and home type stores have sprung up along the outlying cities on the western side of St Louis, St Charles and Eastern Jefferson counties. We are fortunate to have Dickey Bubb, Orschleins, Rural King and Tractor Supply all within a thirty minute or so drive from our house.
I came home one February afternoon to find that Jeff had placed an order for the 'heating element' for his hoosier hot tub. I use the term heating element very liberally. Jeff had purchased a fairly compact, tall metal firebox that sits down in the water with a large exhaust pipe attached to it. The design calls for the operator to start a wood burning fire in the box with a propane torch and the box to be placed in the water with hooks that go over the lip of the stock tank to hold it in place. The hot tub you end up with does not bubble or swirl in any way. It does heat the water very hot and caution must be exercised in determining the best time to enter the water and the length of time to remain submerged. It's basically a giant outdoor bathtub that you must wear swimwear to use unless you want to cross the line from hoosier to exhibitionist.
The fire box arrived and he was itching to go out and buy the stock tank. What elevates this story from simply wacky to outright insane is that he is convinced he is up to the task of riding out to Dicky Bubb the day after having his head operated on to remove a scalp melanoma. So on Saturday morning, my husband Jeff clamors into his ½ ton pickup truck with a bandage on his head that makes him look like he converted to Islam at a Friday evening call to prayer at a Medfirst. Because he is forbidden from driving and has a headache to rival medieval torture, I must drive. And so it is that in the dead of winter I find myself wandering the back lot at the farm and home debating with my husband that even though I would really love to soak in the new tub with him, we only have enough money for the 150 gallon model and not the 300 gallon one we would have to special order anyway. One trip to Home Depot later for scrap wood and a propane refill and we are ready to fire up our latest acquisition.
It is while soaking in the stock tank / hot tub one clear night under an abundance of stars that I came up with the idea for this blog. I hope you find it as entertaining in reading as I have in living.
