Something new from Elvis

This special letter was written for Stephanie by my dad.

Well, things have been pretty slow around here with just Mom and me and Grandkids and Sarah and Mike and Jennifer and Lindsey and Ryan and Ben and Lucy and Toonsees….you know….pretty slow.
It's kind of funny though. For the past 28-years I've daily walked around the house picking up socks and shoes and clothes and towels, and turning off lights and tightening the lids on soda bottles and ketchup bottles and hanging toilet paper on the toilet paper hangers and collecting cups and plates and spoons and forks and knives and sun flower seed shells from in front of the TV and taking them to the kitchen and turning off the porch light before going to work and turning on and off the air conditioner and heater when it got too hot or too cold. Well, it looks like I'm still doing those things! Who would have guessed that it was Mom making all those messes all those years and letting me think it was you!…who knew??
It reminds me of the story often told by Elvis about growing up in Topalo, Mississippi. Some of the particular details may be fuzzy but the story is applicable. Elvis grew up as normally as is possible in the deep south and was more or less a normal kid – he had friends and pets and neighbors and Aunts and Uncles and Cousins and he knew most of the folks in town because he either went to church or school with them or played baseball or ate lunch at the Chick-Filet with them. He often recalled the story about a neighbor of his (the house on the south side of his parents home -- not the north side, where years later the guy who invented Napster used to live before his family was….well, that's a different story for another time). The Tetbar family lived to the south of Elvis' home, just across the irrigation ditch on the other side of the giant rhubarb plants that Mrs. Tetbar (Louise) raised and entered every year at the county fair and every year she came in 4th place behind the Pastor's wife who was always placed 2nd or 3rd except the one year she and her husband went to the "Quadrennial Spring Slip-on" in up-state Arkansas at the "I'm living for the Lord Campground and Retreat Complex", and got caught-up in a sting operation the Federal Alcohol-Tobacco-and-Fire-Arm Agency was conducting and unexpectedly asked Pastor and his wife to spend 7 extra faith-promoting days as guests of government at the 'Spring Lake Adult Correctional Facility" in Western Kansas, so she didn't return home early enough to transplant the Rhubarb starts on time so they never did mature and were not quite as sweet as they normally would be at fair time so she place way behind Mrs. Tetbar that year – but Mrs. Tetbar still came in 4th place.
Mr. Julius Danbout Tetbar wasn't related to Elvis but all the neighborhood kids called him 'Uncle Bubba' and he and his family had lived next door to the Preselys ever since he and Mrs. Tetbar had moved into the neighborhood shortly after their marriage. Being a country boy at heart Bubba had been around farm animals all his life so he kept a few animals in the short barn on his 2-acre property, usually a half-dozen chickens and a couple of short breed Goats and he devised a 3-foot square box that looked like a sand box but was full of grass clippings and humus and wood chips and then some sand and this is where his prized 'long-string' night crawlers were raised and corralled because Bubba felt that a real man wouldn't fish with cheese on a hook, he would only use worms – the same type of bait the Apostles from the Bible used – because if they were good enough for them they were good enough for him.
Of course the chickens provided eggs and kept the flying and crawling insect population under control, but the Goats were Bubba's pride and joy. They did a very nice job of cropping the grass and weeds and bushes and ditch-bank shrubbery and Bubba always looked the other way when they started chewing on Mrs. Tetbar's prize Rhubarb because this was one of the few things Bubba truly hated because his Mother had made all her kids eat Rhubarb as they were growing up during the 1930's depression because it was plentiful and free and grew all over the place so it was easy to pick. So Elvis' favorite Bubba story was when Bubba had 2 female short-breed goats that he had trained just like a dog. They did their job but also liked to play chase the ball and go on walks with Bubba where he'd show them off to the fellows down at the barber shop. So one early November morning Bubba is out feeding the chickens but he couldn't find the 2 sisters. He looks all over the place and discovers that the back gate is open free swinging on its hinges in the wind and it looked like the girls had taken it upon themselves to take a hike so Bubba takes to the neighborhood looking for them but after several hours he stomped back into the house all in a tissie because a real man does not admit that he misses anything and he wasn't going to break down and admit it. After 2-3 weeks he's missing the girls so much that he goes out and buys a male short breed Goat to take their place which he knew wouldn't be hard because a goat is a goat. Problem is his new goat was a real knot head and didn't like Rhubarb and wouldn't go near it and he wouldn't eat grass or weeds because his previous owner only fed him alfalfa hay and he wouldn't eat anything else. So Bubba was not about to give in and let a goat get the best of him so he didn't feed the stubby little mutt for 2-weeks thinking the goat would get hungry and finely eat grass and stuff. So early one morning at the end of the 2-weeks Bubba goes to the back yard to feed the chickens and see if the goat had started to eat and instead Bubba finds the goat laying on his side frozen solid like an icicle and this really put Bubba in a bad state of mind because he'd first lost his 2 prize girls and now this fat-head was ready to push up some daises. Bubba went to the short barn and grabbed the shovel he used to work the worm garden with and went out and found a good spot to bury the goat and places the shovel on the ground and jumps with both feet on the shovel blade because the ground was frozen and he knew it would take a little extra effort to dig the hole. When he came down on the shovel it snapped and broke and Bubba fell on his back and cracked his elbow and got frost in his hair and now he was really mad so he went to the short barn and got the pick ax and square nose shovel – because that was the only shovel left – and he went out and started chopping a hole in the ground that took 45-minutes and he was really really upset about this time so he grabs the goat by ears and tail elevates it above his head but thinks better about it because he sees Elvis out of the corner of his eye looking through the knot hole in the fence watching him. So he laid the goat on its side in the hole but it wasn't wide enough for the goat to fit even though it was deep enough. So he laid the goat on its back with its feet sticking up and started chunking clods of dirt with the shovel into the hole until it was filled up but the legs from the knees up were sticking out of the ground. Mr. Julius Danbout Tetbar really lost it then and runs to the short barn and comes back with his wood saw and starts cutting off the legs at ground level but because the legs were frozen solid they were difficult to remove so Bubba started kicking at the legs and one of them snapped off and smacked him in jaw making him loose his footing and he fell down with his head landing between the front legs sticking out of the ground and he laid there blowing steam out of his nose and said (this is why this story reminds me of you) "I SURE MISS THOSE GIRLS."