Bubba McCoy said that his daughter and her dentist husband, both of the blazing white teeth, came over from Memphis for Thanksgiving.
"I put on my sunglasses whenever they smiled, but nobody paid any attention," he said.
He said Mrs. Bubba baked three pies--basic pumpkin, pumpkin chiffon and coconut meringue--and produced more side dishes than could fit on the table. She'd also invited a couple of lonesome souls from town.
"I ate 'til I hurt, and then ate some more, just to keep from having to talk to anybody."
He said he'd deep-fried the turkey to give himself something to do outside and because Mrs. Bubba preferred that method, though not for taste but to free the oven.
"Her dressing is better than sex, as best I remember," he said.
I asked which he'd forgotten--the dressing or sex--and he said, "Not only do I remember the dressing, but I can still have dressing."
He said Mrs. Bubba cooks her dressing--cornbread dressing, it goes without saying--in a deep dish and produces a crispy top crust that gives way on the serving spoon's penetration to a steamy, moist depth; that the celery and onions aren't crunchy but not cooked away, either, and that she never measures sage but never gets it wrong. He said she once sent him back to the store three times to buy sage that met her aromatic specifications on opening.
"I may as well tell you," Bubba said, "that there was some Thanksgiving news over here that you'll probably get a kick out of."
By all means, I said.
He said his beloved granddaughter, the light of his life and now a social worker in Memphis, had brought a new significant other to the gathering.
"So, that's it? She's got yet another boyfriend who won't measure up in your eyes?"
There was a pause, and Bubba said, "Not exactly. The new boyfriend is a girlfriend."
They just sprung that on you?
"No. the wife told me Thursday morning before they got here."
I wondered aloud if this beloved light of his life was lesbian, or bi-, or experimenting, or what.
"I don't know," Bubba said. "This may just be an initiation anymore for young woke people.
"I got an inkling a few months ago when she told me everybody is some of one and some of the other. I told her I was all boy, by George, and she told me to have my testosterone and estrogen checked next time I had blood drawn. I told her I didn't need a blood test to know what melted my butter.
"She asked me how many decades it had been since I got my butter melted. I told her nobody likes a smart-mouthed granddaughter."
But you do, I said, and he agreed.
He said the fact was that, at 73 now, his main goal is to limit his aggravation to keep his blood pressure down. Anyway, he said, he'd never been able to accept any of those guys being with his granddaughter, either.
"Here's the thing I told her," he said, meaning his granddaughter's new partner. "I said, 'If you'll let me be me, then I'll let you be you.'"
I told Bubba he had just prescribed the globe's healing medicine--mutual tolerance of difference.
"Well, she said it sounded like a fair deal to her.
"Then she looked at the TV and said, 'How many more times are we gonna have to watch a boring Detroit Lions game on Thanksgiving?' And I told her I'd been wondering that same thing since the '70s."
So, you and she bonded?
"I wouldn't say that. We'll bond the day we're still getting along after we get into it big-time, assuming this thing lasts very long."
I asked if he thought it might.
"How the hell would I know? I never dreamed of it until yesterday morning and I've spent all of maybe four or five hours with 'em."
Well, Bubba had made a living reading people on the used-car lot.
"I read her as a pickup, but a sensible one. Toyota Tacoma or Nissan, maybe. I think a Dodge Ram would be more than she wants to say.
"But I could be wrong."
And how did it go between him and his precious granddaughter?
"Well, she did what I needed, which was install the app on my phone that runs these hearing aids I bought over the computer. I can hear a lot better now. Never mind most of it doesn't amount to anything."
He said his granddaughter hugged him at the end--though her friend didn't, having given a quick start at it and then sensed it was too soon--and whispered, "I won't tell anybody you're a better guy than what you put out there."
I told him that was true.
"Now don't you go trying to bond with me, too," he said.
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.