{"id":12139,"date":"2010-06-03T17:32:26","date_gmt":"2010-06-04T00:32:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=12139"},"modified":"2010-06-26T07:43:36","modified_gmt":"2010-06-26T14:43:36","slug":"bubba-cools-out-in-the-cold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/12139\/bubba-cools-out-in-the-cold\/","title":{"rendered":"Bubba cools out in the cold"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story<\/em><\/p>\n

News is not my thing, but sometimes it falls into your lap.<\/p>\n

That’s what Bubba did — literally.<\/p>\n

He was half in the bag and he stumbled and tripped and landed his sloppy self right on me.<\/p>\n

For a while he just laid half across my lap, grinning stupidly at the sky, his arms flailing, directing traffic for the stars. He looked at me and his smile weakened. He said, “Ain’t this the shits?” Then he belched. The smell was… unforgettable.<\/p>\n

He sat up and slouched on the bench on his own weight, throwing his arm across my shoulder like an old friend. His bouffant gray hair was a mess, finger-raked into deep furrows. The skin of his face was a greenish white and it hung on him like an old sheet. Like the last time I saw him, he was wearing a pink chenille bathrobe embroidered with the initials ‘HRC’. His pockets were stuffed with paper tissues and Big Mac wrappers.<\/p>\n

I had been watching him for a while. It was a cold night and I was bundled up on a bench in Lafayette Park, across from the White House. There were news crews camped out over there, of course, and Bubba had been wandering from crew to crew, trying to get someone to pay attention to him. He had gone through the Mood Cycle of the Mentally Adrift: Bravado, self-effacement, supplication, disturbingly plaintive supplication, anger, rage, distressingly uncontrolled rage, resignation and finally a good-humored kind of drunken aplomb. It was in this frame of mind — fatalism amused by its own futility — that he landed in my lap.<\/p>\n

“Gotta laugh, don’tcha’?” He hiccoughed.<\/p>\n

I shrugged.<\/p>\n

“Sure you do! You can run, but you can’t hide! My ol’ granddaddy usta say that. O’ sinner man, where you gonna run to? They made me sing that ol’ hymn ever’ Sunday, and I usta just smile behind my hymnal. I thought I knew better. Right up to the bitter end, I thought I knew better.”<\/p>\n

I said nothing. I really, really wanted Bubba to take his arm off of my shoulder.<\/p>\n

So of course he pulled me Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story News is not my thing, but sometimes it falls into your lap. That’s what Bubba did — literally. He was half in the bag and he stumbled and tripped and landed his sloppy self right on me. For a while he just laid half across my lap, grinning stupidly at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[251,13,29],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12139","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-big-mother","7":"category-casual-friday","8":"category-group-therapy","10":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13786,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/13786\/christmas-at-the-cemetery-with-bubba\/","url_meta":{"origin":12139,"position":0},"title":"Christmas at the cemetery — with Bubba","author":"Greg Swann","date":"December 13, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A Ramblin' Gamblin' Willie story December 25, 1998 \u2013 Christmas Day If you want to hear your thoughts echo into a perfect silence \u2013 go to the cemetery. 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It's wonderful that the European Union has released the primordial Parliament from its foolishly self-inflicted bondage, but, sadly, there is no reason to suppose\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Group Therapy"","block_context":{"text":"Group Therapy","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/group-therapy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Ya think it's easy?","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/BHBNewTopImage-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":17639,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/17639\/overnight-news-is-curbside-recycling-santa-claus-for-adult-babies\/","url_meta":{"origin":12139,"position":3},"title":"Overnight News: Is curbside recycling Santa Claus for adult\u00a0babies?","author":"Greg Swann","date":"December 26, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"It's Boxing Day, which was not invented by Amazon, all the empty boxes notwithstanding. We are obliged by the City of Peoria to separate our trash into one of two 80-gallon wheeled bins \u2013 garbage and recycleables. We generate one 13-gallon bag of actual garbage a week, but thanks to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Group Therapy"","block_context":{"text":"Group Therapy","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/group-therapy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Ya think it's easy?","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/BHBNewTopImage-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":927,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/927\/a-few-good-expenses-a-defense-of-the-salespersons-art\/","url_meta":{"origin":12139,"position":4},"title":"A few good expenses: A defense of the salesperson’s art","author":"Greg Swann","date":"January 22, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"My friend Richard Nikoley dug this up. 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The Valley of the Ever-Fecund Sun is festooned with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Group Therapy"","block_context":{"text":"Group Therapy","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/group-therapy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Ya think it's easy?","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/BHBNewTopImage-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12139"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12402,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12139\/revisions\/12402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}