It’s me, Butt-aches….

When I was a young child of three or four, my grandmother would often take me with her to visit my Aunt Lucy’s house. This was a wondrous thing as in the backyard was a field as far as I could see of huckleberries, which are similar to blueberries. We would take buckets and thread our way through the wiry bushes to pick them. Afterwards, Aunt Lucy would make a huckleberry cobbler for the family to enjoy. My mouth would be plumb purple by the time we had enough to make a decent cobbler.

Besides the cobbler, I loved visiting my aunt and uncle. My Uncle Roy always called me Bud8s although I never knew why. I don’t remember him too well but I remember that I loved him fiercely. After I became an adult, long after he was dead, I told someone about his nickname for me and they said to me, “You realize he was calling you Butt-Aches, don’t you?”

This was something I had not considered and yet that would totally have been in character for him. I suppose being a little kid with all my elders in their 50s and 60s, I would have been a royal pain in the butt.