Bubba and Junior’s High Flying Adventure
PART 1
Sometimes trouble goes looking for victims. Sometimes victims go looking for trouble. In the case of Bubba and Junior it was always a dead heat.
Maybe Bubba and Junior require a brief introduction. The easiest way is to say that when the boys were growing up Bubba rode the short school bus and Junior attended the alternative school.
Bubba was a bit slow and it is certain he will never appear on Jeopardy. In fact, a specialist from the state department of education came to his special education school to retest the only student to ever score a negative number on an IQ test. The retest was very encouraging: He scored 10, not a minus number!
Bubba was a likable young man who left school at 16, with unanimous consent of the principal and school board president. He was given a Certificate of Attendance that was in reality a felt-tipped, modified Vacation Bible School certificate that the principal obtained from his pastor at the First Church of the Second Chance. For Bubba, it was the pinnacle of academic achievement. He didn’t have a glass frame to put it in so he placed it in an empty gallon pickle jar and the certificate could be read by rotating the jar clockwise. The glass jar rested temporarily on the multi-colored cardboard box he had painted in special education art class. The coveted certificate became black edged fragments when Bubba left it out on the sun-drenched back porch steps. Bubba was certain the Old Devil was jealous of his achievement and burned it up out of spite.
Junior left home when he was 14 because he couldn’t take anymore of the weekend beatings his alcoholic father administered after he spent his minimum wage pay check at the Nip and Sip watering hole. His mother had died when he was born. Junior was angry at the world, especially his father, and anyone in a position of authority. He lived for a couple of years with his elderly uncle who spent his days and nights hunting and fishing. Junior really liked Uncle Otis and became an apprentice in training whether he was landing a large catfish from a trot line or shooting a deer at night while his uncle slowly drove his truck, equipped with a spotlight, on the gravel roads. Otis was electrocuted when he tried to snag a few fishing lures caught in a low hanging power line that crossed the river just south of where they always put in the eight foot flat bottomed boat. Junior was knocked clear of the aluminum death trap just after he heard Uncle Otis say, “Sit real still, I’m gonna stand up and use this here long metal oar.”
Both Bubba and Junior were now teenagers without a real home or any real purpose for their lives. The two outcasts knew each other from early childhood and always seemed to hit it off. Junior was half a head taller than Bubba. Junior had a slender build and a very narrow face. His hair was jet black and always looked like he had just combed it. Bubba on the other hand was slightly on the portly side. He had a round face and his blonde tangled hair appeared it had never felt the tug of a comb. Bubba’s shoes were two sizes larger than Junior’s. Both boys had never been to a dentist and it showed.
They made the usual unusual odd couple. The boys lived together in the abandoned tenant two-room house on the old Simpson farm. No one cared because the Simpson farm had been tied up in court for ten years with a son in Dallas and a daughter in Seattle contesting old man Simpson’s Will.
The boys burned wood for heating and cooking; carried water from a nearby cold water spring; and used a fifty year old out house about 100 feet from the dilapidated house that looked like the next candidate for Habitat for Humanity. Lighting was a hit or miss affair. When the boys could afford kerosene (they called it coal oil) they had a single small lamp that even Abe Lincoln would have rejected. The local Salvation Army supplied them with clothing and blankets. Occasional odd jobs helped the boys purchase food at the Dollar General Store. Fish and wild game were staple items in their generally healthy diet.
The boys, now in their mid-twenties, spent each Saturday morning in Rowe Bob’s barbershop listening to local stories about deer hunting, fishing and the high school sports teams. Neither boy ever got a haircut in this gossip-filled, truth-deficient gathering of yesterday’s heroes because they each cut their own hair. Besides who would want their hair to smell like a girl?
Junior and Bubba never played on any sports team; but they were widely recognized as local deer hunting champions who always tagged out on opening day. In fact, one of Junior’s prized bucks was registered in the Boone and Crockett record book.
Rowe Bob, though not looking at Junior and Bubba, said, “You fellas are so good you oughta go to Alaska and hunt them mooses.” Mayor Goodwin, who always worked the cross word puzzle with an ink pen presented to him 21 years earlier, without looking up said, “The plural of moose is moose and not mooses.”
Rowe Bob disliked being corrected about as much as being stuck with a hot check, fired back, “Junior, look in one of them old Outdoor Life magazines and see if there are any ads for hunting mooses in Alaska.” As he said that he silently stuck out his tongue in the general direction of Mayor Goodwin who was looking down at the ash pocked floor from his old green metal outdoor chair and slowly shook his head.
While the customers in this barber shop where straight razor shaves were still available had learned a hard lesson to restrict racial and sexual jokes; however, an occasional four-letter cuss word would slip out.
The lesson happened about six years ago, followed by a clergy rebuke. Alfred Finnley, who was to be next for a haircut, stormed out when an oft-told Traveling Salesman and Farmer’s Daughter joke was just getting started. He came back in a few seconds and from the open door said with voice cracking,” My 19 year old daughter is pregnant and she claims the father is a Watkins salesman who was forced to spend a night with us during last winter’s blizzard.” He slammed the door and would for evermore drive 12 miles to Spencerville to get his haircut.
Pastor Johnson at the Methodist Church, never acknowledged hearing of the barber shop incident, preached a sermon within 24 hours of the incident about controlling the tongue. He made three direct points: “Is what you say kind? Is it necessary? And is it true?” Even the gents at the barber shop who never attended church heard about the pastor’s Biblical rebuke.
Junior found an ad and wrote to an Alaskan guide, and booked a moose hunting trip for the hunting duo two years hence. The young men who had never been more than three counties from where they lived went into high gear raising the money to finance the trip. The fellows sold two super fancy shotguns they won at a turkey shoot and Bubba’s old pickup truck for the earnest money down payment required by the guide.
These two gents, known more for leisure than hard work, changed their outlook almost overnight. The boys got up early and picked up so many aluminum cans the county judge stopped sentencing minor offenders to community service that involved removal of these ever-present shiny cans. They started a lawn and landscape business, plowed and planted gardens, took care of the football field and even painted most of barns within a 50 mile radius. The locals were amazed at the change they saw in these soon to be Alaskan bound big game hunters.
The happy pair went on the much anticipated moose hunting trip and enjoyed it so much they decided to book another trip the next year. Because their work was so much in demand they quickly raised the money for the next year’s trip.
This time they selected High Adventure Outfitters out of Wasilla, Alaska. The flight to Alaska was a six hour time zone change and three changes of airlines. None of this dulled the excitement of looking forward to another moose hunting trip.
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