Let Me Tell You About Big Buff

Big Ol' Buff: He's my ex-college roomie, my stockbroker and one of my dearest friends. The Buffer lives in Miami, Oklahoma. I've written about this place before. It's perched in the very northeast corner of Oklahoma. When I did a piece on Miami two years ago I mentioned there were 13 gambling casinos in town. Well, quite a few of them got pregnant out of wedlock because they now have twenty-three.
Buff and I had lost track of each other after our college years and didn't see one another until 2008 after I made a trip to Kansas to see my kids. "Hey, Buff only lives three hours south of KC so I'll drive on down", I said and it's worked out 'dang good'(Okie talk).
Lizzie and I had had the same old, boring securities manager since 1989. I was into mutual funds and was frustrated with them. I wanted to throw caution in the crapper and get in the stock market where real men live. I just didn't know where to go or who to see. I mean, who wants to end up with a Bernie Madoff schmuck? As it happened I was at Buff's having breakfast and he was telling me about a deer hunting experience. Buff uses words and phrases like, 'shucks' and 'cuz' when he talks.It's more Okie stuff and even though he grew up in Nebraska, to me, it's all the same. One of his favorites is when he begins a sentence he'll say, "At any rate". He does this fifty times every half hour but he's so damned lovable it's impossible to get irritated with this, "you know" type phraseology because he says it so naturally. At any rate, Buff was relating a deer hunting story from the previous week. He said he was in his tree stand and twenty feet in front of him was a ten point buck. Then he looked into my eyes and in the most serious voice said, "MJ, it was five minutes before the start of hunting season and I could not pull that trigger". Zikes! Right before me sat the man I wanted to be my stock broker. In thirty seconds he told me all I needed to know about his character.
The Buff-man is the very best outdoorsman I've come across. He even has a muzzle loader. Geez, I thought that was something Daniel Boone used in territorial Kentucky. He's had every kind of weapon made by Remington dating back 55 years. I can't count the number of rifles in his house. Pistols? It's the same story; one in every room, under each pillow and on top of the toilet. He's like Wild Bill Hickock and Billy the Kid combined. He's the 'man with no name' who can outdraw the fastest gunslinger who ever lived and take out his nose hairs from 100 yards. Buff can do it all and he's my bullseye hero.
Ladies and gentlemen: Except for my Red Ryder BB gun I keep at our lake cabin I had never fired a weapon in my entire life. I'm afraid of guns the way Rock Hudson should have been afraid of AIDS. I don't know what .45 caliber means. The same goes for a Glock 9 MM. The only reason I can write, 'Glock' is because they're popular on cop TV shows. The same goes for a .45. I think they can put big holes in bodies. Anyway, I called Buff a couple of days before my visit of this March. He was 'super Christmas excited' to have me come because he was going to give me lessons in how to load a gun. I would be the same way teaching him how to swing a golf club. He was my teacher, my guru, my alpha and my omega. He would be able to tell me about something called a chamber. I'd learn about automatics and semi-automatics. I would know, after my lesson, which way a bullet faces when it goes into said chamber and comes out at the end. I was serious about this quest for knowledge. For my Christmas gift Lizzie had purchased an hours worth of rifle and hand gun lessons at a local range and I didn't want to appear like a sissy boy when I arrived at the Black Stone shooting range in Delaware, Ohio.
Buff has 170 acres of hunting land with seven deer tree stands. We jumped on his 4-wheeler and rode all around the terrain. He's proud of what he's been able to buy. I asked him questions about hunting, as much as I could. I wanted to know how to gut a deer. Do you pick up the innards or leave 'em lie? The Buffer is a conservationists dream. Shoot! We were walking down a trail and he could look at paw prints in the mud and tell me the type of animals going to the pond for water. He knew if they were male or female. He could tell if they were Republicans or Liberals. The guys is either better than Davey Crockett was or is what is commonly referred to as a first class bullshi**er.
At any rate,(getting sick of this yet) we finally arrived at our shooting range area. It was a tree and Buff stuck a soda can on the end of a tree branch. We walked off forty paces and Buff lined up his .22 caliber pistol. I took particular note of the way he held it, bracing the weapon with hands close together. He pulled the trigger then took his thumb and reset that thing that snaps forward into the bullet to make it go fast out of the barrel. After six shots had been fired I took note that my Master pulled the trigger again to make certain the chambers were empty. "I have to remember to do that", I said. After he was finished we walked to the can to witness the damage. I didn't say anything out loud but there wasn't one bruise on the piece of cola aluminum. "So be it", I thought, "the wind must have been blowing". It was now my turn. It can't be that embarrassing to fail if Wyatt Earp has problems. I have one major physical problem, my head has a slight tick in it. It's constantly moving. I have one of those golf gizmos that you aim at a flag on the green to get your yardage distance. Usually it reads either 150 yards or 220 yards depending how how my headbob is working that day. What the hell! Let's get this over with I decided. I'll take aim and pull the trigger. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam!
Then just as Buff did I pulled the trigger one more time but there was a bullet in the chamber and I shot into the dirt. I was sure I'd pulled six times but evidently not. I had lost count. We slowly trudged toward the can while Buff said, "It's not easy to do this the first time out". And I'm thinking, as we arrived at the can, "then why are there three holes in it"? My promise to Moses and Abraham was this. I would not say one single word to Buff but out of the corner of my eye I saw The Great White One with a very sheepish grin and a slight shaking of his head as if to say, "This cannot be happening to me".
Lucky for Buff we still had to fire the .22 caliber rifle but this time from eighty paces. I'll skip to the end because this is oh so, how does one say it, like sex! It was 'smoke a cigarette afterward' satisfying. Buff-0 for six. MJ Hawkeye-2 for 5--again.
The way I see it is if I can learn to count to six instead of five I could be real dangerous.
I hope to God Buff doesn't read this blog post. After all, he is my broker and I don't want to look at my portfolio on Monday and see that I've invested everything I own in Solyndra and the Chevy Volt.