Goat Tales: The Legend of Bubba and Hopper

"This actually exists"

Outside of Paris, Texas, there is a murky puddle of water filled with gar and man eating catfish called Pat May’s Lake. One of the filthy beaches on this lake is called Lamar Point. It is a haven for underage drinking and date rape. During the summer after my eighth-grade year, a few buddies and I decided to go spend the night out there. This was stupid because we had no beer, tent, food, or pretty much anything. I wish I could remember why we bothered but I can’t.

It was me, my twin @thewisesloth, my buddies Jesse, Garret, Robert, Tony, and a really fat girl with a disturbing amount of neck hair that we called Goatee. We loaded up in the back of Goatee’s piece of shit Toyota pickup and headed out to the lake way too late so it was nearly dark by the time we got there. About half a mile from the “beach,” Goatee’s truck broke down. We pushed it for a quarter mile before Garret got pissed at it and kicked out her tail light and Jesse scribbled some profanity on the windows with a bar of soap he found in the truck. I don’t know why she had a bar of soap. She wasn’t using it. Goatee threw a tire iron at them and we walked the rest of the way. She abandoned her truck there because she was sick of it and was able to claim it was stolen because of the vandalism so that worked out but I still thought it was pretty fucked up.

"Nicer version of actual truck"

Anyway, about the time we got to Lamar Point, a truck drove by and Garret and Jesse started yelling obscenities at it for no good reason. Since we were in Texas, someone stuck half their body out the passenger window and pointed a rifle at us and started screaming. Robert and Goatee took off running one way and since you are only as fast as the slowest person in your group we all took off the other way. It was just getting dark when the redneck with the gun and his buddy found us half way across the park in the bushes. We didn’t have anywhere to run so we just waited to get shot.

The leader of the two approached us and said, “Hey there Bubba! (Bubba is a greeting in Texas) You seen some punk kids running around here?”

We sat there confused for a while in case it was some kind of clever trap and finally said, “Uh, no”.

"Who, me?"

He threw down his hands in defeat and said, “Shit Haas, them fuckers yelled at my old lady. Oh well, hey we fixin to eat some catfish ya’ll wanna come?”

Fuck it. Why not? We didn’t have anything better to do.

Then he introduced himself.

“Allright, Bubba, my name’s Bubba and this here’s Hopper, now that’s short for Grasshopper. Yeah we just staying out here havin some fun. Aint that right Hopper?”

"Artist's rendition"

This was a long time ago so that’s about all the dialogue I remember from Bubba and Hopper so I’ll just describe their situation. Bubba, Hopper, and Hopper’s old lady (That’s Texan for girlfriend/wife/and sometimes mom) had been squatting out at Lamar point for about two months. They had been eating catfish from the lake and driving in to town to stock up on beer and cheap whiskey. They built a fire under one of the park’s metal trash cans and were using it to boil their laundry. I had to wonder how effective this was but since their idea of a bath was swimming in brown lake water I doubt it made much of a difference.

The rest of our crew trickled into the camp and we all listened to Bubba and Hopper talk about how they wished they could find those kids that yelled at their old lady. We all got drunk off cheap beer until Bubba and Hopper passed out. We stayed up trying to cook catfish and shell string beans but we fucked it up and wound up accidentally destroying most of their food. Then Robert went back to the truck and fucked Goatee. We left their camp early the next morning before they woke up. I have no idea how we made it back into town. I’ll never forget Bubba and Hopper and their unsanitary version of Southern hospitality. They say that on a clear night at Lamar Point you can still hear their voices in the wind when the moon is full.

wssh wsssh “Aint that right Hopper.” Wssh.

Also, I can’t believe Robert fucked Goatee.