His entire name is Gustave Beauregard Lizzard, and he will quickly point out that his last name is prounouced Lee-zard.  He goes by Gusbo, a nickname is daddy stuck on him many years ago when he was a kid down in New Orleans.  Yeah, Gusbo is a Cajun, and a perfect example of the old time southern gentleman.  His manners are flawless, his style is top rung traditional, and his demeanor is cool and calculating.  He dresses in a white suit in cooler months, then shucks the jacket in favor of an ornate silk Hawaiian shirt in summer.  He often wears a straw hat with a straight brim, but sometimes he strolls main street in one of those Jungle Jim hats.  He's a dude, any way your turn him . . . and he's seventy-five years old.

I should admit right up front that I'm a great admirer of Gusbo Lizzard.  He's got class, lots of it.  He built his own house, a small place but one that looks like the smaller French houses of New Orleans.  He drives an old Mercedes-Benz ponton, a touring car that's a slick as a button.  And, he's a collector of unusual objects, like railroad spikes.  He's a train historian, for one thing, and has written lots of books on the subject.  There's no more avid an environmentalist alive than Gusbo.  He loves animals, but he's a big time lover of plants of any kind . . . even the ones most people hate.  He knows geology, geography, and has done a lot of research concerning rocks.  Perhaps his first and greatest love is for trees.  He's a collector of woods, knows a great deal about that . . . and he's a master whittler.

Gusbo Lizzard is a historian, but hardly anybody around Crab Apple Cove knows him as anything but a storyteller par excellante.  He lives in a small house out at Hiram's Cove on the lake, but he comes to town every morning to have a roll at the Upandatem Donut Shop.  After entertaining the crew there for a little while, he usually strolls on down to the Hootin Hotel for his morning chess game with Lerch, the manager.  Lerch's real name is Hugo Wiggins, and although he's nothing at all like Gusbo (he's a retired Marine Corp enlisted officer), he's the next best chess player in town.  After that Gusbo might stop off over at the Town Hall where all the seniors hang out.  By seniors, I mean the sure enough old timers around town, like at least seventy or above.

Nobody knows much about Gusbo's history because he's not prone to talk about himself.  He'll talk about pretty much anything else, though . . . including quantum mechanics, if that's your druthers.  He talks like a philosopher, even a mystic at times, but what he writes is usually anything but mystical.  He's a down to earth, tell it like he sees it, blunt, critic of modern society.  He writes a column for the local newspaper, but he's also a blogger quite a few folks who follow that stuff know from his Lizzard Onarant columns. 

Gusbo is a self-appointed keeper of traditions, old ways, and parts of our past he sees as important to our preservation as decent human beings.  He hates most newfangled electronic devices, even rants about them from time to time, but he's sure handy with a computer.  Oh, he's not a technician in any way shape form or fashion, but he's a blogger these days . . . and he's very much a crusader for getting old people more interested in internet communication.  He even taught a course down at Town Hall showing old farts how to use a computer well enough to get involved in chat lines, online communities, buy and sell on ebay, search for medications at cheaper prices, and so forth.

Anyway . . . Gusbo is getting his own profile here at Campo Madrone.  It's closed to the public right now while we figure out how to present it without pissing off half the civilized world (or that part of them who read blogs).  Like I said, when he writes, Gusbo is sure not always as congenial as he is in real life.  He's written lots of history books, says he learned his lessons there, and now wants to write about real life situations that need addressing . . . and changing.  And, he rants.  By his own admission some of his blogs are a little over the top sometimes.  But he's not easy to censor.  We're working on it.

D. Paz, 1/14/08