Bubba McCoy greeted me by asking that I pick up a pen from the floor of his trailer office at Bubba's Auto Emporium.
He couldn't get down to it.
"If I drop something anymore, it's gonna stay there until a customer or a Little Rock liberal comes along," he told me.
Bubba is now north both of 70 years and 285 pounds. He told me the doctor tells him he needs a hip replacement as soon as he gets fit enough to do the rehabilitation.
"I don't know if it's my gut or my hip," Bubba said. "It all happens about the same time whenever I try to bend down."
I asked him how he could bend any way other than down. He told me to shut the blank up with that language-correcting blankety-blank. He said he wasn't in any mood.
What is it that happens about the same time whenever he bends?
"My gut gets in the way of my downward progress just when that bone-on-bone in my hip kicks in and I cry out like a baby."
I told him sometimes hip pain can be referred from disc problems in the lower back.
"You got one of them Google medical degrees, don't you?" he said.
But then he admitted that the doctor also told him he needed a low-back MRI as soon as he lost enough weight to fit into the tube.
He said business remained good in this Trump economy there on the shore of the White River, moving those low-mileage SUVs, pickups and faux-muscle cars.
"Answer me something," he said. "All this business with Trump about steel tariffs and the rising price of metal--don't you reckon that might be good for the late-model used-car business? My product's done been made."
I said that he had managed to contrive one of the most imaginative Donald Trump defenses I'd heard. I said the way China might retaliate on farm products could mean nobody in the area would have any money to buy a vehicle, used or otherwise.
"Man, you don't have a clue," Bubba said.
"Farmers aren't buying my vehicles. Farmers around here don't live here anymore. They've either sold to conglomerates or moved off and hired people to run their farms. And the people they've hired ... they're some of my best customers. And they're going to still be here.
"They like pickups. Their wives like the SUVs. Their teenagers like the Dodge Chargers. And they like paying less than they would for a new one, as long I finance for 'em and give 'em a warranty for a year or two.
"Let me try to educate you on this economy," Bubba continued, struggling forward in his recliner to reach his coffee mug.
"If you get to the point where you can sell some regular old Joe something of quality with any kind of a guarantee and that he can drive off the lot without paying much to start with--you're gonna be doing all right. My customers are working folks with enough money to get by if they can spread that money out. And they make their payments. Most of 'em, anyway.
"And every dadblamed one of 'em is for Trump. He may be crazy, but he's their crazy. Democrats are all bunched up anymore out in California celebrating the gays and illegal immigrants.
"These people around here care about two things--getting by for their families and who's gonna be the Razorback quarterback. And I'll tell you something to tell Wally Hall: If your paper don't quit putting all this World Cup soccer on the sports page, you're gonna lose 'em as subscribers.
"They don't give a hoot in heck about the world, or a city liberal's idea of a sport, like soccer. They're trying to get interested in Razorback baseball, and they're happy that they're good at something up there, but it still ain't like football. They think heads are for helmets, not conkin' some silly soccer ball.
"I mean, seriously: Argentina vs. Croatia? Are you kidding me? Don't force that stuff down my throat. Let's make Arkansas great again. Give me a sports article in June about Connor Noland. I think he's gonna be the quarterback before the season is over, don't you?"
I didn't hear his question. I was checking my phone for the Argentina-Croatia score.
But I did manage to tune back in long enough to tell Bubba that, for a Razorback football fan, there was no greater coach than the new one who hadn't lost a game yet and no greater quarterback than the one just out of high school after shredding Smackover's secondary.
Bubba told me to get back in my little wimp crossover and hie on back to Little Rock where I belonged.
I told him not to drop anything while I was gone.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 06/24/2018