I called Bubba McCoy on his cell to wish him a merry Christmas, and he said I'd caught him down on the floor and unable to get up.
"I'd pulled the phone out of my pocket to call Rent-a-Crane for help when you called," he said.
Naturally, I urgently asked what the matter was.
He explained: "Oh, hell, the old lady said she was going to call this guy who does some work for us to bring the Christmas tree in from the porch and get it set up in the stand. And I said the day I was too old to do that was the day I needed to just pack it in.
"So, she's out doing some shopping and I brought that tree in and got down here and set it up--straight, I think--in the corner. But now there's nothing firm over here for me to get hold of. I can get up on my right leg but the hip won't allow it on the left. So I need balance and leverage on that side. That's all.
"I'm just sitting here commiserating before I crawl like a baby over to the couch."
I asked him if there was anything else he might tend to while he was down there. It's an old joke.
"I'd clean these nasty baseboards if I had a rag and some cleaner," he said. "Call next Christmas and remind me to bring the equipment when I make this annual trip down here."
I asked if Bubba wanted to crawl to rescue and call me back. He said, no, just hold on, he was on his way.
I should have recorded the commotion I heard over the phone. There was all manner of scuffling and scraping and moaning and cursing. And then, there was the alarming sound of sliding and a seriously cried-out expletive.
I pleaded: You all right?
"Oh, hell, yeah. I'm fine," he said. "This couch just moved a little on me when I pushed off on it to get myself up. I was doing a little bit of the splits here for a second. So I had to kind of just hurl myself and hope for the best.
"I'm about to get turned around here on this couch ... there, that's it. So, what's on your mind?"
Nothing anymore, I said, other than wishing I'd had a camera for what I'd just heard.
Then Bubba said, "Oh, no." I asked what the problem was.
He said, "That tree ain't no more straight than Liberace."
Do not--I demanded--get back down on that floor. Take your points for a good try and let the ever-wiser missus bring in the agile young blood.
"Helluvan idea," he said.
I told Bubba that readers and I were interested only in three things.
What did he make of the Hogs' football and basketball situations?
"I think the football situation is that they had a lucky year last year and an unlucky year this year, and that's just the way it's gonna be year-in and year-out. We ain't never gonna be no Alabama or Georgia.
"I don't recognize the basketball team. I watched the Arkansas-Oklahoma game and figured out midway in the first half that I'd been rooting for Oklahoma. Red uniforms. White uniforms. Players whose names you don't know. What was the difference?"
What about the midterm elections?
"The Democrats think they really did something, but they didn't. Republicans have decided Trump's crazy, as if half of them weren't."
And the car business? "I sold more vehicles this year than I could get out of the recliner for. People were deciding by themselves on the lot and then coming in here to pay while I was still trying to do the one sit-up needed to reach that lever on this chair."
Bubba said he started telling people they could get $50 off the price if they'd help him get to a forward-seated position so he could do the paperwork.
"Everybody took the deal except for the guy who thought he was going to negotiate. He thought he was going to drive away in a Chevy pickup for less than I paid for it.
"He said, 'You want to get up out that chair, don't you?' I said not that bad. He said, 'All right, then. Your choice.' And he left."
Did he come back?
"Oh, yeah, he came back about an hour later. But I was up by then. Had been for about 15 minutes. And I told him it was back to list price. He said surely I'd give the discount I offered in the first place. No, sir, I said. You should've helped me when I asked for help."
Did the guy buy for full price?
"He did. I took his money and said, 'Merry Christmas to me,' and it wasn't but September."
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.