I'd rather be lickin.....

You know there are just people in your life that make it real. Bubba, Vera Lee’s husband, is one of those.

I know I have written about him, but today is his birthday, (March 19) and I told him that he was just a harbinger of spring…that on this last day of winter, his momma gave forth a howl and there he was…the truth and nothing but the truth, Winter’s last stand…the “Just Mustard-man”.

He’s the backbone of the Friendly Village, just ask anybody. Bubba knows just about everything there is to know and can do everything there is to do. “Call Butch” has been our mantra for nearly twenty years and there’s not one of us that hasn’t benefited from his…brain, brawn, and problem solvin skills.
My water heater is leakin….Call Butch
My car is dead…Call Butch
My pizza dough won’t roll….Call Butch
My mashed potatoes are gooey…Call Butch
How do I know when a 8 pound tenderloin is done…Call Butch
My heart's broken...Call Butch
I need a spare table and chairs…Call Butch
There’s a mouse, bat, possum, raccoon, cat, fly, hornet…. in my house. Call Butch, and tell him to bring his gun!
I need to move a mountain…Call Butch!
You get the picture. Bubba can; set a table, cook a roast, fix my broken watch, pin, or ring, glue china so you can’t see a seam, wire a Christmas light as easy as a whole house. He can fix what's broke and know when to leave it be.
Name a fossil or jus solve the “problems of the world” with my uppity aunt. He's brain and brawn and heart. He’s always there for you…but one time Buck’s momma warned us, "He's a good man, but don’t use him up."

You get the picture, there are at any given time between ten and twelve of us here in the Village and Bubba is the Mayor…always has been and always will be. I can’t tell you how many pounds of meat he’s has cooked for us.

Once, during hurricane season,and I don’t remember which one, but we lost power for five days and were some kind of gritty, evil, and hungry; we all took our food up to Bubba and Vera Lee’s house cause Bubba had the big grill and plenty of chairs.

Well, that man had coffee goin every morning at 7:00 a.m. and then made biscuits, on the grill! We’d gather and talk and smell and fret and leave with a full belly. Didn’t have the nerve to reappear at lunch, but dinner-time we’d bring up something from our defunct freezers for Bubba to throw down and we’d gather again, at the Mayor’s Table to solve the problems of the world and have community. The meat may have been thawin and the lettuce wiltin', but the beer was always cold.

If he got tired of our sorry hungry faces, he never said it. He’d frown sometimes cause it was hot standin over that grill while everybody else was waitin like baby birds to be fed..but he never closed the gate. Only the skeeters ran us off.

Now the “rather be lickin’ a cat’s ass” story is really Vera Lee’s but she’s busy bakin a “Black Forest Cake with butter cream icin’ (Bubba’s fav) so I’ll tell it this time.

We were all old when we finally got up enough money to purchase our “get away’s” . Bubba and Vera Lee bought a great house on the Cape, but it needed lots of elbow grease to git it the way Vera Lee wanted it and if you know Vera Lee, she wanted shiny wood floors, no carpet, and no linoleum allowed under those feet. So when they started rippin up there was all the black goo…glue stuff left behind. So every weekend, meant a tool box filled with varsol, steel wool, and scrapers. Both of um on their knees and butts inhalin varsol and usin the heavy arm to bring out that floor. Well, long about the fifth room in so many weeks, Bubba turned to Vera Lee and he jus said in his strait out way,

“ Damnit, Vera Lee, I’d rather be licking a cat’s ass than be doin this for another minute!”

Now that’s descriptive, that’s honest, and that’s Bubba. I love that story. So when you visit Bubba and Vera Lee at the Cape, and you look down on those floors you know what went into um. You’ll know the kind of man he is. The Mayor don’t let mice run, bats fly, food waste, or friends down. So, Happy Birthday Bubba, we love you man!