By Jack Cawthon
âI thought you wuz dead,â Burvil yelled into the phone. I replied that the same rumor had been started about Mark Twain while he was very much alive, thinking that every one had read my prior column and got the joke.
âNaw, âol Mark over on Blue Tick Crick croaked nigh on five years back,â Burvil
replied. (No, I guess he hadnât read my latest column, a blow, but one I had experienced
many times back when alive.) âSaw him stiffern a board, but thatâs the way he looked
most of time when he had a bottle of Old Al Hag,â he chuckled. Good to know that
Burvil was somewhat the same as when I left him!
I had tried to put a call through to Big Puf for several dayswith no luck. I finally called
the phone company serving that area of the frontier, one, fortunately, that Daniel Boone
hadnât had to experience.
After listening to two or three George Jones records, interspersed with âyour call is
important to us,â then a couple of Hank Williams hitsâwho cared the wait, it was my
kind of musicâa female voice came on the line. I asked if she was live or a robot, and
she came back, âHoney, if you have a Touch Tone phone just push the right button and
youâll see.â Just what I had always hoped : a phone company with humor!
I told her I had been trying to reach Big Puf and couldnât get through. She called me
âhoneyâ again, a word I hate as it implies Iâm old, and told me she would check. After
some Marty Robbins, she was back on the line saying that she could only find a Little
Huffing outside Richmond. I told her the description was close, but I was thinking
Roanoke, the one in Lewis County.
She informed me that the company would place âhigh priorityâ on resolving the problem.
I foolishly asked what that meant, and she replied no longer than a month as the company
was having a little trouble getting parts from China.
Only a short time later, the call came from Burvil who told me he was using Arley
Cleeterâs âsystem,â which rather verified my suspicions that Arley had connectionsâ
maybe somewhat loose ones-- with a no name government agencyâand monitored my
call and alerted Burvil.
I informed Burvil that I was concerned about the welfare of Big Puf and asked if he had
seen any signs of the pandemic. He said that by golly he hadnât yet but he had hoped to
as he had heard it was coming from China and he could just imagine a Chinese car,
probably small and cheap. âThem Chinamen make good stuff cheapâ and if Trump kept
sending him money he might be able to buy one, as his Dodge Dart had a busted engine.
I said âno, noâ I was talking about the COVID-19 virus. That had him more excited. âA
Chinese sports car! Holy ---! Never heard âbout one afore. Whatâs the 0 to sixty?
Trumpâll have to send lots of money for that one! Olâ Les Archabald, coal baron, will
only be the one able to git one. Went bankrupt but has more cars than har, har lots of
women. (Was Burvil just laughing or punning? Could he be smarter than I think? Two
years away! I need further study!)
It suddenly dawned on me: I had lost my ability to speak Big Puf in the two years I had
been absent. I blame higher education around Morgantown. I have always had an
acquaintance with it but never developed a kinship before.
had to change the subject, so I asked about Granny Pratlow. That pulled Burvil down
from his high cloud. He told me Granny had been a mite poorly but had gone over to see
Doc Quackery on Little Wheeze and he had shot her up with a needle. He added that Doc
had a lot of experience with needles as he used them on himself pretty often.
Doc said he had seen on Fox News from a top doctor that if he injected something, Burvil
thought was called âdisinsecton,â it would be a magic cure. I immediately became
concerned about Granny, figuring she would die. Burvil laughed and said Granny was
clean as a hog in a hot tub, didnât tell dirty jokes or cuss anymore. In addition, instead of
the big malt liquor bottle she generally carried, she had replaced it with a jug of Clorox.
âSmells just like she came out of the wash,â he laughed.
I had to end the call before I became a bit foolish. Over the two years I had forgotten how
to speak in Big Puf fashion; itâs like some kind of virus, although I didnât want immunity
as that might leave me only with higher education, a deadly disease for which there is no
cure, except perhaps to enter into politics.
This is my attempt to get back on track again. It might take a spell and maybe some
Clorox treatments, but Iâm trying. Hope you will hang with me!
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