With all the madness going on in presidential politics, a few readers have wondered what that lovable old boy over at Bubba's Auto Emporium east of here might be making of it.
So I drove out to see him, largely from curiosity. Would I find that rascal Bubba McCoy still hard at it in the used-car business as he ventured near the big 7-0?
It's been 30 years since Bubba lost the in-laws' farm and got out with enough cash to open up what he first called Bubba's Tote-the-Note.
"I ain't got nothin' else to do except sell cars," he said as we drank strong afternoon coffee in his trailer office.
He said his health wasn't bad, mostly because pills were attending to all the things that were naturally wrong--blood pressure, blood sugar, blood cholesterol.
"I think I'm going to quit having 'em draw blood. Maybe I won't be so sick if I don't know it."
He said business was pretty good. I said he should thank President Obama. He said he thought he'd thank the natural cycles of an economy that not even Bush or Osama could "rurn," which is Bubba-speak for ruin.
He calls Obama Osama, every time, either by honest error or on purpose. There's no point correcting him.
I suggested he could retire and spend more time in Memphis with the grandkids Yvonne and the dentist with the blazing white teeth have given him.
"Let me explain something to you," Bubba said.
"Those grandkids are teenagers now. They're the ones who have no time. They don't climb up in your lap anymore and say 'I love you, Pawpaw.' They're either gone or their heads are bowed in worship to those damned phones.
"No, I'll just sit here all day and wait to sell somebody a car or an SUV or a pickup and ask who they're votin' for for president. It passes the time."
So who are they voting for?
"White people, every one of 'em, are voting for Trump. Black people, every one of 'em, are voting for Hillary. And that comes out to pretty near a dead heat over here."
Why Trump and Hillary?
"The white people say the country has gone so far to hell that we may as well take a chance on something way different. They're tired of all this political correctness. They think all men talk that way about women and that Trump is just upfront about it, which, as you and I both know, is the truth. They think Trump's campaign manager ought to be able to pull a woman away from pestering him without a federal case being made of it. They just think the world has gone crazy enough for a crazy president.
"The black people say Hillary cares about 'em and the others don't. She's getting credit for Bill. I think maybe he really did care about black people. Now there's a guy who doesn't look very good. Is he OK?"
I said former President Clinton didn't seem to be.
"My theory," Bubba said, "is that he got scared from that heart trouble and now doesn't get enough fat in his diet. If I could do one thing for him, I'd grill him a big, marbled ribeye."
And what, if anything, did Bubba reply to these customers when they related their presidential preferences?
"I tell 'em Trump's nuts and Hillary's mean. So they ask me who I'm for. And I tell 'em I'm not for anybody.
"I'm too old to care. It's my grandkids' problem. But I can't save the world for kids who live in an iPhone screen."
Bubba said he tells people he wants to go back to a time when we had good and upstanding and sane men for presidents. Roosevelt. Truman. Eisenhower.
"Hell, even Bill was a good man. You can still be a good man even if your pants fall off every time a pretty girl smiles at you. There are worse things than that, though you'll have a hard time convincing your wife of that."
Did Bubba's britches still fall off that way at the big 7-0?
"The pretty girls don't smile at me anymore. Now my britches fall off because I don't have enough of a rear end to stop 'em from sliding down from this sloped gut. That's why I've gone with these suspenders. Plus they add some color to my life. You like these?"
His suspenders were purple and yellow and maybe some other color. I asked if they were patterned from a Jackson Pollock painting.
Bubba said he thought Jackson Pollock was a movie director. I said that was Sydney, the late.
"He died? The guy who made Star Wars?"
No, that was George Lucas, who is alive.
"So what did Jackson Pollock make?"
Paintings that look like those suspenders.
"Whatever."
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 04/03/2016