I've already explained that Crab Apple Cove isn't named after sour little apples that grow on a bushy tree.  Nope, around here a crab apple is what's left laying around on the ground after a big bullshit session down at the Crab Apple Cafe or over at Butterface Betty's Barbeque Place.  Actually, Betty's place is just called . . . well, er . . .Betty's Place.  Nobody with good sense would call her Butterface Betty to her face - unless they were wanting a new set of teeth or something.  Just in case you're not up on such things, the term butterface comes from somebody saying, "You know, that old gal is built like a brick shithouse, but her face ain't too good."  Betty fit that description back in her younger days, but Mother Nature has a way of making things even.  She still had the butterface, but the rest of her had grown up to fit it . . . and her disposition had gone south like a goose on sour grain.  Apparently, so had most of her good will toward folks in general.  In short, she was plenty bitchy, and the crab apples around her place sure got deep sometimes.

The woman had some real talent, though, when it came to making barbeque, and everybody was willing to overlook her looks and bad disposition for a combination plate of barbequed meats, potato salad, cold slaw, and baked beans.  Uncle Percy discovered Betty's Place right after moving there, and he's been eating there at least three times a week ever since.  I've heard he's put on a few pounds, but that's not a big deal because he needed a little more flesh on his bones.  He even got so taken with the food around there that he applied for a job . . . and got it.  Betty put him to work tending the pits, those big metal cookers where the meat is smoked.  Maybe you already know this, but down here in Texas we don't put sauce on meat while it's cooking.  We go ahead and call it barbeque, but it's basically just smoked meat with no sauce at all on it.  You can put sauce on it later, if you like.

Well, all that happened back six months ago . . . back when Percy first moved down to the lake and got himself a little house there.  He was excited about it, being as how it was the first home he'd ever had that didn't have wheels on it.  He bought a little place for a song and dance because it was all run down and almost past the point of repair.  But Percy's a hand with carpentry, and within a month he had the place looking good.  He even built a nice fence around the back yard so Biggie, his pet Chihuahua, could have a place to hang out.  Once he got settled, he went over to the juco and enrolled in a creative writing class.  That's what I said - a creative writing class.  

Now Percy B. Hand might've completed the eighth grade, but I doubt it.  He's not stupid, but he's sure not well schooled either, and I had my doubts right off that Percy could get much out of a juco class on writing.  He had his mind set on it though, saying he wanted to write down his adventures before he got old and died.  Right now, you see, Percy's only about seventy-five, and considering the shape he's in, he's likely to live to be a hundred or more.  He's tall and skinny and still tough as a sun dried carp, and his mind's plenty alert too.  Still, learning to write when you don't know much English is a helluva chore - and Percy soon found this out.  He sat in class and listened as intently as he could, but when it came time to write his first little story, he made a bad grade - a D.   His choice of topics probably didn't help him much because his paper was called How To Skin A Coon. 

HIs second paper went a little better, but the subject matter didn't get much better.  He called it Making Slingshots With Rubbers.  He brought the house down when he read it in class, especially when he got to the part about getting the rubbers out a machine at the local truckstop cafe.  His third paper was on homemade toilet tissue, and his fouth was about cooking - something about how to cook mud turtle soup.  After four papers, he had moved up from making D- to C, and that still didn't make him any too happy.  Not knowing sentence construction was a handicap for sure, but Percy's spelling was awful.  

It was about then that Percy went to work part time at Betty's Place, and a friendship of sorts began to develop between them.  When Betty discovered that Percy was taking a juco course in creative writing, she was shocked.  Anyone who had ever head Percy speak would be shocked that he could stick it out in any class utilizing the English language.  The language Percy spoke was somewhat akin to English, but sometimes you needed a redneck interpreter to decipher what he was saying.  Maybe she felt sorry for him, or perhaps she admired his try, but she started helping him with his papers . . . and she started teaching him how to spell and how to put his sentences together a little better.  

Percy's fifth paper was about making good barbeque, and he even tried some humor this time when he called his story How To Barebque an Armadillo.  He made is first B with that paper, and that was all it took for him to keep going.  He studied hard then . . . well, about as hard as a man who can barely read can study.  But his reading was improving a little, and he attributed this to what Betty had been teaching him about English.  How could a barbeque cook know that much about English, he wanted to know.  And then she told him - Betty had once been a teacher, long time ago.  She'd given it up, she said, because she didn't have the looks to be a good teacher.  Students can't listen well, she said, if they had to look at somebody as ugly as she was.  That made Percy feel bad . . . real bad.

There's at least two lessons to be learned here.  One is that having lots of try is about as important to learning as anything else, even if you're not all that smart.  Effort overcomes a lot of things, and Percy knows all about that.  He's not good with words and sometimes can't explain himself too well, but he gave lots of thought to how he could tell Betty why she thought of herself as ugly, and why most other people did too.  He wrote his last paper for his creative writing class all by himself, with no help from Betty or anyone else, and he called it Droppin' Crab Apples.  In his story he told how Crab Apple Cove got its name, and he even wrote about Betty.  He didn't call her by name, but he used her as an example of how sometimes other people see us as ugly because that's what we present to them.  We see ourselves as ugly for the same reason, he said.  He suggested that looking good for other folks, and yourself, comes off when we turn off the ugly and turn on the beauty.  Dropping crab apples might be fine just for playing around and arguing for the sake of argument, but it's not good when it comes to dealing with people on a regular basis.  "Quit droppin' them crab apples," he suggested in his story, "and folk might even get to thinking you look plumb good."  Ugly is as ugly does, he concluded.

Percy braced himself for a big fight when he finally showed Betty his last paper.  But she didn't say a harsh word to him, just wiped a few tears out of her eyes and gave him a big hug.  Percy's still working part time at her place a couple of nights a week, but other things have changed around there.  Betty has started wearing make-up and even dressing up to come to work.  Somebody said she even has a boyfriend now, some guy who just retired from the service.  I hear he's not too pretty either, but he's a nice guy who keeps a big smile on his face most of the time.  And . . . there's a new fixture at the restaurant now - a scoop hanging on the wall beside the cash register.  By it is a sign that reads, "If you drop crap apples here, take 'em with ya!"

D. Paz, 9/25/07