YMMV / Brown's Pine Ridge Stories

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • The Joyriders from the fourth story ("The Strawberry Cow") can easily be the subject of this. Were they Jerkasses who committed their actions out of some sort of mean-spirited sense of entertainment as the author believes or were they Good Ol' Boys in a case of drunken-induced One Crazy Night that got out of hand who otherwise wouldn't have been involved in such an incident while sober?
  • The Unnamed woman who is mentioned in the thirteenth story (and never appears after that) can also be subject to this. Is she really the child's grandmother as the author believes or is there some other sort of dynamic in play?
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: The "Brazier" mentioned in "The Race" would likely be mistaken by some readers as a made up restaurant for the story, but it does exist. Most readers, particularly those born 1990 and after, would recognize it as Dairy Queen.
• Designated Villain: The Joyriders. While what they did (drinking, driving, and firing firearms at the same time) was certainly irresponsible and eventually brought about their own deaths, but the lack of details regarding their reasons for killing Ole Strawberry fails to give a sufficient reason to regard them as evil.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the Twelfth chapter, the author refers to his car as "My Little Pony" without any knowledge of the aforementioned franchise nor its certain well known recent adaption. Granted, while Brown's Pine Ridge Stories was published in May 2014, but the author alleges to have used the quoted phrase in 1969, thirteen years before Hasbro even created the MLP series.
• Squick: In "Paying Attention", Gary seeks to get the attention of a young girl of his same age by performing a stunt. This would likely attract reactions of "Aww" at first, but it is then revealed that the girl, whom the author had met for the first time that day, was a cousin of his... Oops.
• Values Dissonance: One can probably tell from reading the fifteenth story ("A Tragedy and a Miracle") that Georgians (and for that matter Southerners in general) prior to the 1960s failed to provide adequate, if any, day care as shown by the fact that Mrs. Dollar had to take care of her infant grandchild while at work as a Cafeteria lady. Now while it should be noted that the account is set in 1937, when the Great Depression was ongoing and thus many people didn't have the funds for Child daycare facilities for working-parents, but even then the fact that working-class people's children aren't seen as being as worth cared for so that other working relatives can focus on their jobs still stands.
• The Woobie: Gary Brown presents himself as this at the end of "The Train at Jay Bird".