Bike Week Buddies

After a morning of wild hog wranglin’, Uncle Bubba and the Duke rolled into Samsula, FL at the intersection of Pioneer Trail and Tomoka Farms Rd. A rent-a-cop in an orange vest flagged them by to a dusty parking area out in a field behind the Cabbage Patch Bar. The usual large crowds of Bike Week partiers were gathered around the huge fenced area in the middle of the sandy acreage. The infamous women’s coleslaw wrestling event was in full swing and unfortunately for the two weary hog wranglers, it was the super-heavyweight division goin’ at it. They surmised that the one big ol’ girl may have been wearing a bikini but it was suspect. The two didn’t hang around long; after wetting their whistle, they got back on the road and headed further east to New Smyrna Beach to have dinner at J B’s Fish Camp & Seafood. After a fine dinner—the Duke had shrimp and Bubbie had a blackened grouper sandwich—they rode up US 1 to Port Orange and then traversed the intercostal causeway over to A1A. Destination: Main St, Daytona. The Bobby Friss band was rocking Dirty Harry’s and electricity was in the air.

Bobby’s first rowdy set was over, it was about 11:30 pm. Uncle Bubba looked over at the Duke and they nodded to each other unenthusiastically that it was time to get out of the crowd and find a place to lie down. The Duke pulled the small wrinkled paper and angled it a couple times in the light to try and read the chicken scratch scribbled across the end.
“What’s that, your grocery list?” Bubbie joked.
“Naw,” said the Duke, “it the directions to the camp.”
Bubbie’s smile fell from his face.
“We gotta head back, 9 miles from the Cabbage Patch and then look for some big power lines that run over the road. It’s a half mile from there.”

The two friends had been up since 5:00 am to catch wild hogs and now they were facing a ride to a friend’s camp back down RT 415, south of Samsula. They walked back to their hawgs and layered on their leather jackets and gloves. Bubbie considered donning his chaps but it didn’t feel too cool. Big mistake. They weren’t a mile out of the city and the fog laden road was cold and damp. 25 miles later they were shivering, driving in pea soup fog, trying to look up over their heads for power lines; not an easy feat on a motorcycle. After several U-turns and double-backs, the Duke finally spotted the large wooden double gates to his friend’s property. They unlatched the chain holding the gates together and rumbled through into a dark wooded pasture. Both were a little unsure that they were in the right place, but cold and tired; they were willing to take the chance. ¾ of a mile down a sugar sand lane, mined with cow pies, deep into a wooded hammock, they found the bunkhouse.

With nothing but the bike headlights to help them see, they fumbled around to find the door, then the doorknob. Incredibly there wasn’t one and the door was locked. Armed with a cigarette lighter, the two stumbled around the shadowy corners of the structure to find another way in. Luckily there was a back door and it wasn’t locked; they ventured in. The Duke pulled out some scratchin’ paper and lit a scant torch to inspect the murky surroundings.
“Well, there’s bunks so we must be in the right place.” the Duke declares.
“It ain’t much, but I’m ready to lay down just about anywhere.” Bubbie replied.
“There’s lights. There has to be a way to turn them on.” says the Duke.
Like two archeologists searching the black bowels of an Egyptian pyramid, the two road warriors shuffle about to find the secret to turning on the lights. The Duke leads the way with is lighter and mini torch of any paper he can find to light. After a good half an hour of flipping switches and searching for a panel box, Bubbie finally concedes, “That’s it. I’m laying down. I don’t need no light on to sleep. There’ll be plenty of light in the morning when we get up.”

The two hit the bunks and within minutes they were asleep. Perhaps hours later, Bubbie suddenly woke to a rustling and over the pounding of his heart he heard a door to the cabin open. Sure that it was a bear or the owner coming into to shoot them, he snapped his head around to see if the Duke was in his bunk and could faintly that he wasn’t! He was outside relieving himself.

Early the next morning Bubbie woke to a racket that sounded like golf balls dropping on a 55 gallon drum…and he was inside the drum! He cracked opened his eyes and his tired gaze fell on the ceiling of the bunkhouse. It had a nearly flat metal roof that was nothing but rafters and sheets of shiny corrugated metal. The heavy dew from the dense fog of night was dripping off of the trees and dropping loudly onto the roof. It didn’t take long for the two to get up, pack up, get out of the drum and back on the road. Walking outside, Uncle Bubba was slightly taken aback at what the bunkhouse looked like in the daylight; it was probably better that it was pitch dark when they found it the night before.

“All I need is a cup of coffee.”
“Sounds good to me.” replied the Duke.

It was the perfect cool sunny day for a ride home. After coffee and a doughnut at the nearest gas station they rolled back across the byways home. After a safe return they laughed as they both agreed that it was the perfect trip and vowed to make it again soon, but next time with a few more friends.

The Great Hog Roundup

Uncle Bubba and the Duke had quite a weekend. The Duke is having a pestiferous wild hog issue at the ranch and called Bubbie to join in the havoc of dispensing of the sounder. (Yankee translator: a sounder is a herd of wild boars) The wild boar are rooting up his pastures and ravishing everything in sight. Friday night they dispersed a pungent washtub of swill in the trouble spot to lure the sounder to the bait. At day break, the Duke, Bubbie and the cowboy crew met at the barn to make the plan. The cowboys unloaded in their dogs and horses as the Duke and Bubbie pulled up. They were wide-eyed as the Duke unloaded an arsenal of weaponry.

“Alright men,” the Duke says, “the plan is that we’re gonna take as many of these hogs as we can.”

“Uh, I dunno about shootin’ round my dogs.” one of the hands says nervously.

“Well then… we’ll grab as many as we can…” the Duke pauses, “but if we have to shoot, we will. Now let’s get down the lane, they’re waitin’ on us.”

Heading down the grassy lane between the pastures in the light, early morning fog, Bubbie spotted the dark profiles of stocky beasts rooting under a large live oak.

“They’re right there Duke!” he said excitedly pointing to the area where they had dumped the swill the night before.

“Let the damn dogs out!” the Duke yelled through his windshield. Unfortunately the cowboys were too far ahead to hear and hadn’t yet seen the beasts. Finally one loose dog cut out after the hogs and the fracas began! The men were sure that the hogs would split up and scatter into the woods lining the pastures but they circled the small pond and emerged from the other side like a 16 car freight train chugging down an adjacent lane and breaking across a pasture. The Duke had all ready wound up the white diesel Ford pickup and set out after them. He rounded the corner of the lane and gunned it down the straightaway. Dale Earnhardt Jr. had nothing on the Duke as the sod flew and he had ‘er fishtailing over the bumpy ground. In a streak of lightning he threaded the big Ford through the open pasture gate and broke into the pasture.

“You can turn’em if you beat’em to the corner!” Bubbie yelled.

“I got’em.” the Duke calmly replied as the tree line approached rapidly.

Sure enough, he turned the wild little freight train of hogs and they bolted back down towards the far end of the pasture. By now the cowboy with the cage of cattle dogs in the back of his truck had caught up and was bounding parallel to the Duke across the pasture with the freight train of hogs charging between them. The cowboy’s tailgate was down and the coup gate was open and there were dogs flopping out of the back with every bump. Stunned they’d get to their feet and realize the melee was on and the hogs were fair game. They fearlessly charged into the herd and the hogs dispersed. The Duke slammed on the binders and stopped the truck. They hurriedly bailed out to wrangle hogs. Uncle Bubba bolted around the back of the truck to find the Duke holding the biggest black boar by the hind legs, wheelbarrow style, and a dog latched onto each ear. The sound of hogs squealing, dogs barking and growling and men yelling was fearsome. The two men yelled and kicked at the dogs to try and shake them from the boar and get after another.

“Yaw! Git! Bubbie, grab a rope!” the Duke commanded. “Let’s get this one tied so we can get another.”

After hog tying the snarling squealing black monster, they looked around the pasture and each cowboy was on a hog. The dogs were still excited, yapping and biting at the hogs tied up and laying on the damp sod. The men smiled at one another as they looked over the captured quarry.

“We’ll load’em in the back of my truck and take’em up and put’em in the trailer.” says the Duke.

“Put’em up in the front and untie’em.” one of the cowboys croaks.

“Ah-ight.”

The Duke and Bubbie unloaded the hogs into the trailer.

“Shut the gate.” the Duke orders from inside the trailer. Uncle Bubba wonders how the Duke is going to untie these hogs without getting mauled inside that trailer, but the Duke has spent a lifetime handling livestock and fearlessly wrangled each one out of its rope cuffs. The Duke is Bubbie’s hero.

The hogs had little fight left in them by now and the Duke took command of them in short order and they were untied and cowering in the front of the trailer.

“That’s all right,” the Duke laughs, “Six hogs and not a shot fired.”

Yep, says Bubbie, “That’s cowboy huntin’!”

Bubbie checks his watch. “Hey it’s 8:00.”

“Time to get on the hawgs and ride to Daytona.” barks the Duke.

The two laugh as they hop into the pickup and head back to the house.

Hogs, to Hawgs, to Hogs

Uncle Bubba and the Duke are recuperating from a wild weekend. The short story: wild Hog hunt, rode Hawgs to Daytona for Bike Week, watched a couple-a-Hogs (a.k.a. Humongous Overweight GirlS) in bikinis wrestling in coleslaw. Stay tuned, details comin’…

Dreams I'll Never See

Bubbie’s view from his windshield is clear on this bright sunny day. The sky is cloudless and brilliantly blue. The green in the trees still have that yellowish spring tint that denotes happiness and joy and signals the coming of summer. One of his all time favorite CDs, The Allman Brothers Band from Polygram Records is playing the backing track to his day. Seven great songs that stir Bubbie’s emotions as he travels through the back farm-country roads. (Actually it’s been playing for nearly two months now; he’s having his own little contest of how long he can listen to it before he’s had enough.) Coming over a rise, just between a peanut field and a pine stand, Greg Allman is floating along in one of the solos in song #6, Dreams (7:18 mins.). Attributable to the excellent production of this recording and Greg's talent, one can almost picture his fingers as he plays. That’s what Bubbie loves about the Allmans, the tensioned layers and humanness of there performance, often subtly playing ever so slightly behind the beat. It projects a cool demeanor, like they almost don’t regard their own genius before skillfully, fluidly passing the passage of to the next musician as a brook flows into a stream.

Bubbie rolls up to a red-light and patiently waits to turn onto Hwy 41. He sings to himself as he turns the radio down, “Pull myself together, put on a new face, Climb down off the hilltop, baby,
Get back in the race.” The light turns green. The sky is blue. The road is straight and clear.

Can’t?

I overheard Bubbie talking to the Duke the other day and he said his grandma Mabel always told him that “Can’t never did anything.” It was one of her favorite sayings. I got to thinkin’ about that and here it is days later that still rings in my ears and then it occurred to me like a slap on the forehead! We can do anything that we really want to. If we took the word can’t out of our vocabulary, we would have to replace it with the word won’t. That has a whole different connotation and one that is much more truthful.

Sign of the Times

While Uncle Bubba travels the byways, traversing the various country sides, he has noticed an aggervatin’ anomaly and has expressed his disgust of a growing trend. Y’all know Uncle Bubba can get down on some dark topics and when he’s in a mood he’ll freely share it. Anyway, the growth of this trend is so evil and insidious that it may just doom us as a civilization. If you disagree with that you may agree that at the very least it is a symptom of the grave illness that our society suffers from. What is it you ask? Warning signs! Now before you through the baby out with the bathwater listen; remember when a warning sign meant something horrible might happen to you? Danger—Slippery When Wet—Icy Road—Steep Grade—Flammable, No Smoking.

The new breed of warning sign now expresses the implication of harm, but is really intended as just a precursor to a declaration absolving the property owner of culpable responsibility. Here is an example that Bubbie showed me today:



Obviously if the driver of this truck doesn’t clean it off after loading it with dirt or debris prior to driving it down any old road ahead of you, and a rock falls off and cracks your window, it’s your fault. By the way, following at 200 feet is about the length equivalent to two-thirds of a football field; not an easy feat behind a crawling rock-hauler in any town or city.

I can see how walking around your rig to quickly inspect and sweep of any potentially dangerous material might be too challenging for the average truck driver. How could anyone expect to do that every time; after all, I’m sure his job description is truck driver, not truck driver/cleaner? And of course they post this warning on there because rocks never fall off and crack windshields or chip paint. It’s just because.

Here is another:



So if the ol’ Ford is parked, waiting for the moving machinery that opens the gate to launch into gear, and the chain snaps and lands smack across the hood of Bubba’s truck, it’s his fault. You reckon if a fella were to slap a warning sign on his .45 Smith & Wesson with some duct tape and a sharpie, he could shoot whom ever he wants and he’s not responsible. Hey, just like Dick Cheney!



Uncle Bubba thinks it’s time we all grow up just a little bit and take responsibility for something, even if it’s just a little bit to start. Like the Duke says, don’t worry 'bout the mule son, just load the wagon (translation: just do your part and I'll do mine). Smile at a stranger, make a handshake count, and let the lawyers starve.