Bubba holds forth

Bubba McCoy answered his phone, and I said people wanted to know how he was doing cooped up in the house with just the missus.

He said he hadn’t missed a day at the car lot and had just sold an old boy a pickup.

“There ain’t no viruses over here, at least not yet,” he said. “Anyway, the rule is 10 people. I ain’t had 10 people in this office in 35 years.”

This is Bubba’s usual busy season. Old boys have started getting tax refunds, otherwise known as down payments.

He said this next round of government stimulus checks would make the first month’s payment.

And then? “That’s what I’ve got a good repo man for.”

I told Bubba that the reported virus cases thus far are mostly only those confirmed by limited testing based mostly off each other. I told him the latest map showed a case in the abutting county, which comes closer to Bubba’s Auto Emporium than some communities in his purportedly virus-free county.

I told him young pickup buyers could carry the virus asymptomatically. I reminded Bubba he was

73 and fat and had a stent.

“You keep your rear end home,” I told him. “I need these columns.”

He said I sounded like the missus, but that his granddaughter probably wouldn’t care what happened to him.

It turned out Bubba had been assaulted by the great generational divide. His granddaughter had shaken him to the core.

“I saw her the other Sunday over in Memphis for her momma’s birthday. Hadn’t seen her in months. She’d had something better to do Christmas. And she looked me square in the eye and told me that my generation had ruined the world for hers.

“She’s telling me it’s my fault that there’s climate change and a deficit and wars and student loan debt and school shootings.

“She said we got blessed by our parents being heroes through the war and Depression, but that we squandered it and then borrowed against her future on top of that.

“Do you think she’s right about any of that?”

Kind of.

Missy is 24, on the millennial-post millennial cusp, and in a social work master’s program at Memphis University. She’s acing it, because she’s always been smart.

She always has been Bubba’s light. He once held her bicycle and walked it around the yard, and then let go gently as she kept her balance and squealed with delight.

For her graduation from the University of Tennessee, he gave her such a generous cash gift that he implored her not to disclose the amount to her underachieving kid brother.

“She’s for Bernie,” Bubba said. “Here’s what she said: We need to recalibrate—I think that’s the word—the socialism and capitalism aspects of our economy.

“What the hell does that mean?” I explained that we have socialiststyled safety nets now. Missy was just saying we should raise the socialiststyled safety-net side a little because times and needs change.

Bubba said he supposed I agreed with that.

“Not enough to vote for Bernie,” I said.

I told Bubba to tell Missy that thing that Lou Holtz said that time. It’s that things are never as bad as they seem and never as good as they seem, but that, somewhere in between, reality falls.

He said Missy didn’t know Lou Holtz from Lickety Split. He said he was teaching Missy’s momma to ride a bicycle when Holtz was coaching Razorback football.

“Time flies, I guess, when you’re ruining the world for your granddaughter,” he said.

Suddenly Bubba told me he had to go. Missy, of all people, was calling. He called back in about 20 minutes, with spirits lifted.

“She told me to shut it down and get home because the last thing she needed right now was to lose her grandpa. She said she was one granddaughter not willing to sacrifice her grandpa for the economy. What do you think of that?”

I said it was a love stronger than generational resentment. I said she had probably accomplished what no one else could, which was getting Bubba to stay home and behave responsibly. “I reckon you’re right,” he said. Then he told me that he bought toilet paper in bulk at the car lot and that he’d venture out long enough to open the storage shed if I got desperate and wanted to drive over.

I was already halfway to the car as I told him I’d be there in 90 minutes and to stay six feet back when I got there.

“Maybe I ought to sell the toilet paper and give away a pickup with every roll,” he said.

After I get mine, I said.

He said he thought he’d go fishing and that maybe I should wait a day and also pick up a mess of crappie.

I told him I’d make two trips.