There I was, noting the oddity of asking a used-car dealer for his wisdom on how Democrats might better make a credible sales pitch for rural Arkansas conservative voters.
But my old friend Bubba McCoy knows those folks well by having spent decades putting them into late-model pickups, SUVs and faux muscle cars.
I'd told readers Wednesday in my lamentation for Arkansas Democratic ineptitude that I thought I'd ask Bubba for his advice for beleaguered Democrats. Readers said that would be great and that they preferred the columns offering Bubba's wisdom in place of mine.
"I don't talk people into nothin'," Bubba told me from deep in the torn recliner backed up against the humming antique of a window air conditioner in the trailer office.
"Used-cars dealers get a bad rap by comparin' 'em to politicians," Bubba said, reaching for the remote to mute a Matlock rerun on the 32-inch screen wired to a cable box.
"I've told you before that a person sells himself a car. If he likes the way it looks on the lot and likes the way he imagines himself drivin' it, then he's gonna buy it even if it don't start--even if I stand there right in front of him and roll the odometer back 50,000 miles, which I would not do, of course.
"I sell these cars by pickin' 'em out at auction and getting 'em detailed. My sales pitch is Armor All. My skills are not verbal; they're, whadaya call it? Exthetic?"
Aesthetic. Close enough.
As Bubba likes to say, you can call a dog a cat as long as you know the difference.
"I tell too much truth to fit the used-car salesman's ... what do you call it? Sterotype?"
Again, close enough. Only a one-vowel syllable missing. Ster-E-o-type.
Bubba continued: "Here's the first thing a Democrat in Arkansas will need to do if he's going to come over and try to get a vote from my customers: He's going to have to say that he has nothing to do with the national Democratic Party and with that New York woman--what's her name?--saying we need to do away with gas cars and go to electric or mass transit in 12 years."
He meant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and I don't know that she said exactly that, although I'm not sure nuance and subtle distinction make a big difference at Bubba's Auto Emporium.
"A Democrat has to come in here and say, 'I don't think Trump has good sense, but we ain't gonna beat him with whatever it is they're drinking in New York and California.'
"I'm telling you right now--if they'd announce over in Little Rock that the Arkansas Democrat Party is severin' ties with the national party--that it's gonna be locally independent like the Baptists--they'd go up 10 points overnight in your precious polls."
I told Bubba that Democrats faced all the losing "wedge issues" that hurt them in the rural Southern conservative culture--pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-gay marriage.
"I was watching TV the other day and the girl was decidin' to get an abortion, and I caught myself talkin' to the screen, saying, 'Don't do it. Don't do it.' But it's the law and the state of Arkansas ain't gonna change that. They've done everything they can over in Little Rock to restrict it.
"So just say it's up to the feds and Arkansas needs to worry about how the schools stink.
"On guns, people over here would go for background checks. I think they'd even go for banning these automatic guns, or at least those magazines with a hundred rounds. But you're gonna have to admit to them that it wouldn't change anything on these crazies doin' these mass shootings. Don't BS people.
"Send Mike Beebe over here to explain it. His old legislative district came to right up there. Smartest Democrat I ever listened to."
Of same-sex marriage, and LGBT issues generally, Bubba said, "I may not approve of or understand the way you have your sex. But if you'd put a camera on me in the bedroom back in my active years, you might not have understood every move I was making either.
"As long as it's private, as long as it's consexual [he meant consensual, I hope], I do not give a ... [vulgarity deleted]."
I asked Bubba what he wanted of a positive nature from a Democratic politician.
"Nothin'. People vote according to which candidate worries 'em less. So tell me less. That way, you worry me less. If you've got some idea on how make the schools and roads better and get rid of these opioids, I'd listen to that.
"But the happiest vote I remember casting was for that guy running for lieutenant governor on a platform to do away with the office."
That guy lost.
"He just didn't get his message out good."
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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 08/18/2019