Commentary from the boondocks. If it makes any sense, it is just by chance. billyjoebobsbbq@yahoo.com

 
Didn't snow! They closed the schools early yesterday, sent the rocket scientists home early, bought up all the milk, bread and flashlight batteries in North Alabama and then it didn't snow.

Cletus came in this morning and said that he and Mary Ruth are thinking about getting married. I asked him if that was such a good idea since between them they have been married a dozen or so times. He said that they both knew that this was the one and that they were really made for each other. Bubba said they were surely a matched set.

It reminded me of Cletus' 4th or 5th marriage. He had always just gone down to Trenton, Georgia, the Wedding Capital of the South, but that time they decided that they would have a real wedding with a preacher and everything. His bride to be read up on weddings and decided that they should be married in Cletus' parents house. They got the preacher from down at the Holiness Church to come over to the house on a Saturday afternoon to perform the ceremony and invited a few of their family and friends to attend. Bubba brought along his boy's camera and I baked up a wedding cake at the BBQ Emporium and got one of them little bride and groom plastic things and put it on top. It was real pretty if I do say so. The wedding was scheduled for right after dinner (1:00 PM for non-Southerners) and right on the hour the preacher showed up rarin' to go. Seems he had a barbeque to get to and didn't have a lot of time to spend on this wedding stuff and besides, he could see that Cletus wasn't gonna pay much. He asked me why the fool didn't just go to Trenton like everyone else. Well, I could see he was getting all antsy, so I rounded up Cletus and the bride to be and got them stationed in front of the preacher and he had just started reading the stuff about dearly beloved when Cletus noticed that no one other than me and the wife were watching the great moment. " Hold it Brother Bobby Joe" He said, "I gotta get eveyone in here". He went in the kitchen where Bubba was trying to figure out how to put film in the camera, all the men were helping him and the women were admiring the wedding cake yours truly baked up. Cletus told them all to get in the living room as the wedding had commenced. He used more colorful language but I don't dare write it here since his Mama might near knocked his head off for talking that way under her roof.

Meanwhile back in the living room, Brother Bobby Joe was bouncing up and down because he was missing the BBQ. Cletus came back and Bobby Joe picked up where he left off. Still only me and the wife watching but Bobby Joe was on a roll and before you could've entered any objection, he had them married, grabbed his Caterpiller Cap (He drove a D7 during the week and preached on Sundays) and was out the door. Halfway to his pickup, he remembered that he needed the marriage certificate witnessed and came running back. Cletus asked him if he wanted a piece of wedding cake. That's when his new bride first saw the wedding cake and started bawling. Cletus asked her what was the matter and she said that she had beed married five time before and it was the first wedding cake she had ever had and she just wanted to keep it the way it was forever.

"You can forget about that, sister" said Brother Boobby Joe. "I done missed half the BBQ over this tomfoolery and I sure ain't gonna miss any cake". Well a fight sorta broke out then and me and the wife snuck out the back door and headed back to the BBQ Emporium and had us a piece of pecan pie. "It sure was pretty up to when the fight broke out." the wife said. Yep, it was.

There must be something about them preacher weddings because that one lasted almost twice as long as Cletus' average.
posted by <"Billy Joe Bob"> at 6:39 AM

 
Well, its closing time. Probably snowing outside. (Well, hell. Of course if it is snowing, it is outside. We do have a roof on the BBQ Emporium.) Cletus has been in here reading blogs and says Miss Meryl Yourish fell and hurt herself and it has affected her mind. I asked if she had fallen on her head. "No, the other end or maybe the middle but it has affected her mind since she wrote that she thinks your miserable little blog of lies is funny". Cletus has become real touchy about my blogging. He says that his Mama didn't raise him to be the butt of my sick sense of humor and besides, if anyone in District 2 ever read this thing, it might hurt his chances to be a County Commissioner. I said that I thought he had decided to be a philosopher and had given up on his political ambitions. "No, I have not. In fact, with all these Senators entering the Presidential race, I might just run for Senator". I said that I didn't think either of our Senators was likely to enter the race since they are Republicans.

Cletus said that it probably wouldn't hurt to have politicians also be philosphers, then at least they would think about something. I told him to go on home and enjoy the snow. " How can I? I forgot to get Mama's bread, milk and flashlight batteries?" (Damn, I'm gonna have to look up how to do quotation marks and punctuation. Until then, I'll just do it both way and be right sometimes) I told Cletus to take some milk and bread from the BBQ Emporium and tell his Mama I said hi. He just left with a bait of hushpuppies, a bucket of milk and what looks like three pecan pies.

We may be Compleat Rednecks here, but we do know how to tell a lady (Miss Yourish) to take care and get to the doctor if the pain doesn't go away right soon.


posted by <"Billy Joe Bob"> at 5:51 PM

 
Cletus says he saw the weather report that we can expect snow tonight or tomorrow. Says he just hates it when we have snow. He says that if a county official sees a sheet of white paper on the ground, they start closing roads, government offices and schools. Then everyone in the county goes to Walmart, buys all the flashlight batteries, bread and milk and settles in for the impending doom. Then it snows and the women and kids head off to Wally World to shop and the men go hunting since everything is closed and people can't get out to work or school. I asked him why that bothered him since he never went to Wally World and his work is mainly sitting around the BBQ Emporium. He said it was the increase in business we always have on bad weather days since no one wants to start cooking and risk losing their food when the power goes off. People buy so much of our stuff that regulars can barely get enough to eat.

Then of course, there is the riddle he has been trying to answer for years: If the weather is too bad for people to get to work, how do the Wally World people get there to open the store?
posted by <"Billy Joe Bob"> at 6:34 AM

 
Cletus says he has figured out the budget problems that Alabama is having. The state is spending more than it takes in. "Brilliant conclusion!" Bubba said to nods from the BBQ Emporium crowd. Well, four people, but it is late. Cletus continued talking. "If it is so easy, then why haven't the politicans figured it out? It doesn't take one of them rocket scientists who come in here to figure out that what comes in from taxes goes up and down and you better not depend on it always being up. Seems to me that is the same problems the feds are having. They thought tax money would always be high. Couldn't they see that people would not always be selling stocks and making a fortune? Sometime you lose money in the cattle business and I figure the other stocks are the same. Then you write off your losses and pay less taxes. If old Billy Joe Bob messes up the BBQ, then people don't eat here, he doesn't need wood, I am out of a job and buy less. That's the way I see it." Well we couldn't disagree with that. Maybe Cletus does think when he is out cutting wood.

"Wait a minute" Bubba said, "Since when do you buy anything?"
posted by <"Billy Joe Bob"> at 3:03 PM

 
Boy was it cold this morning. Cletus says it was too cold to go cut wood. Bubba asked if that was a philosophical position or just an observation. Cletus said that even lesser intellects such as Bubba should be able to understand that not everything a philosopher said was a philosophical position, but that he was sure that distinction was way over Bubba's head. Cletus said sometimes it is just cold although cold was a relative thing and that someone living in Minnesota probably wouldn't think 25 degrees in January was cold. Bubba agreed on that point and asked Cletus if he had any more revelations for us. Cletus said he thought it was too cold to think deep thoughts especially when he was surrounded by jackasses and that he thought he would just have a piece of pecan pie. It was only 9 o'clock and I asked him if he didn't think it was a little early to be eating pie. He said that his philosophical point for us on this fine Wednesday was that it is never too early or late to eat pecan pie.

We all had a piece. He may not turn out to be a great philosopher but he knows his pie.
posted by <"Billy Joe Bob"> at 1:36 PM

 
Cletus says he has realized that he is one of them natural born philosophers. Bubba asked how he had come to such an idiotic conclusion since there doesn't seem to be a lot of philosophy flowing from him, at least that is not what most folks call it. Cletus said that being out in the woods as much as he is just naturally leads one to the philosophical life of pure thought.. Even the BBQ Emporium customers who usually iqnore these little daily talks rolled their eyes at that one. Bubba asked Cletus to share one of his deep thought with us so that we could go forth and contemplate like he heard that them Greeks did who listened to that Socrates fellow. Cletus thought real hard for a minute ( you could tell by the way his forehead crinkled up under his John Deere cap) and said "A man gotta do what a man gotta do". We all sat there in stunned silence. Bubba finally said that he had to admit that was pretty deep, but that he didn't think it was original. "What goes around comes around", Cletus replied. " You can't expect me to be philosophical and original. Most of these philosophical thought have already been thunk". Bubba asked him how often we could expect to hear from Alabama's newest philosopher. From in the back of the room came a voice. "Just about everyday would be my guess. We hear everything else that works its way through that thing Cletus calls a mind".
posted by <"Billy Joe Bob"> at 6:02 PM

 
Cletus says he has been reading some of the anti-war posts on the internet and he is tickled by some that say that violence never solved anything. He says that violence solves lots of problems. Just ask the policeman who has to crack some drunk's head to arrest him. Cletus says he is really bothered that our school system has produced people who can use a computer and write grammatically correct sentences, but who cannot come up with a single logical thought. Bubba says that coming from Cletus, that is serious indictment.
posted by <"Billy Joe Bob"> at 1:16 PM

 
A few days ago I posted on how Cletus and I are almost brothers through our multiple family connections. I am sure that some of you think that those familiy connections explain some of our actions and even the way we live. In a way, you are right. It is not the fact that Cletus and I are cousins on both sides of the family or in multiple directions that is important, but the fact that we bother to know that that we are actually blood related. Family is important to us. Cletus might drive me crazy but he is family so I go crazy and am happy to see him everyday. Oh, I guess that is because we are friends. A lot of family I am not happy to see.

In case you were wondering, Cletus is over the hangover and back on his feed.
posted by <"Billy Joe Bob"> at 12:44 PM

 
Cletus came in this morning looking worse for the wear. I asked him why he looked so much worse than normal this morning (that is really saying something) and he said it was all the Huntsville City Council's fault. Since we don't live in Huntsville and I don't think that they even know Cletus, I asked him just what they had done to make him look so worn. He said that it was their vote on Sunday beer sales in Huntsville. It seems that Huntsville now allows the sale of alcoholic beverages on Sunday and Cletus was duty bound to go check it out. "Cletus", I said, "You don't even drink beer". He said that was normally true, but he figured that beer bought on Sunday would just naturally taste better so he went down to Huntsville and bought a case and since he is now living with his Mama, he had to drink it before he went back to her house and did I know how bad you felt after a case of cheap beer. I told him that I didn't know what you felt like after a case of good beer, but I could imagine it wasn't something I wanted to experience. He allowed that I should learn from his mistakes. I asked him if he had been crazy enough to drive after drinking a case of beer and he said that Mary Ruth had driven him and that now she might not want to see him again. "Because you got rolling drunk?" He said that had nothing to do with it. It seems that they went in the F250 and some of her friends saw her driving that fine piece of machinery and now she says that she would not be able to show her face in decent company. I told him to look at it his way. She will be able to write several column inches about how Cletus Jones is among the sick and shut-ins this week.

I bet she says he has the flu.
posted by <"Billy Joe Bob"> at 11:21 AM