At Last, The Bucky of Nelsondom

All right ladies and gentlemen and sports fans of all ages, the time has finally come for tales of Bucky Nelson. By the way Nick, my blogs are long, tough noogies, get over it.

Bucky Nelson was born Harry Lynn Nelson or that's what his folks named him anyway. He was named after his mean grandfather who owned the other store/gas station in atomic City. It was at the opposite end of town as Fackrell's Texaco, probably less than 1/4th of a mile away on the only paved street in town and was a Utoco station. He (Grandpa Nelson) may not have been mean. My only memory of him is when he was yelling at me for stealing "politically incorrect named for African-American" babies. The filter would not print the name, but that's what they were called. They were made of rather hard licorice shaped like a baby and were two for a penny but I didn't have a penny or an old beer bottle (also worth a penny) to trade for them. It could have been my first attempt at crime in my checkered past. Holy Crap! I really am digressing. Back to Bucky. His dad was not too fond of the name Harry (or his own dad of that name) so he called little Harry, Buckshot. Which got shortened to Bucky, and stuck. My earliest memory of Bucky is when he first moved to town, my friend Lecky and I were throwing rocks at him for some reason that escapes me now. Bucky was 6' 3" tall and weighed 203 lbs. He was definitely the biggest kid in the third grade (we were in the 2nd grade at the time). As we were running away from him, he caught Lecky by the shirt (I was much faster then) and proceeded to throw him in the air then pound the crap out of him when he came down. This is when I thought he'd make a much better friend than an enemy, so I started to help him pound the crap out of Lecky. By the way, Lecky's real name was Lester, also named after his grandfather who they called Leck. Lecky had been my best friend up to this point but was much smaller and easier to beat up. Oddly enough, he remained my best friend and fully understood my motive in switching alliances and said he would have done the same if he could have out run me.

This seems long and may have outdistanced Nick's attention span but I want to tell one more about Bucky. One bright summer day found the two of us out at the town dump searching for treasures. Fine stuff like broken wagons to slide down the trash hill in, old comic books, dirty magazines, whatever. I was at the top part of the hill where people would dump the trash and let it slide down the side of the hill, when, low and behold! I found the best treasure in the whole of trashdom! It was a huge glass insulator from an old power line! It was shaped like a bell and about 6" tall and 5" across the bottom. It even had a couple feet of wire left on it! "I must show this wonderful treasure to Bucky," said my little mind. " I know, I'll throw it down to him so he can marvel at its wondrousness." So a couple spins around my head, and off it goes, in the air, right at Bucky's head. Since he was looking the other way and it was rapidly approaching his cranium, my tiny mind kicked in and decided I should let him know it was coming. "HEY!" I shouted. Just in time for him to turn toward me and have the rather large glass insulator hit him above his left ear and drop him like a ton of bricks, rendering him unconscious. A more empathetic boy would have been concerned about Bucky's well-being, however, being more pathetic than empathetic, and also being fully aware of his quick temper, I knew he would eventually awaken and kill whoever threw the stupid thing at him. Thus being much more concerned for my welfare than his, I started running for town as fast as my pudgy legs could take me. Looking back, I saw him get up, rub his head and with steam/smoke coming out of his ears, seek the object of his hatred. It seamed like 436 miles I ran with him right on my heels until I finally made it to the safe-haven of the Women's bathroom at Fackrell's Texaco station. He pounded on the door for awhile (but NOT on me) until he got tired and went home. He was fine the next day with really not that big of a lump over his left ear. We even went back to the dump to see if we could find the glass insulator, but it had become someone else's treasure... we never found it.

Next time, The of Bucky Nelson.