Bubba Johnson Blows His Coop

The story here is mine, but after an over-capacity outage, ChatGPT just came back online, so I asked it to take my dialog and add the redneck accent. I did a cut and paste with most of its replies without editing. There were some I didn't want it to change and I think you'll see which ones those are. The prompt was simple. "Write this dialog in a redneck accent."

I don't know as I like it all that much. Y'all will have to judge for yourselves.

This tells the story of how the redneck boys mentioned in the previous post came to the town of East Weevil, Indiana.

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Bubba Johnson walked unsteadily away from his still, looking at his hip flask, wondering how it had gotten so empty. It had been full at noon, but now, around 6 PM, there were only a few swallows left.

He was about 20 yards from the still when it blew. The force knocked him down, although the moonshine might have had something to do with it, too. A piece of white-hot shrapnel from the back of the still streaked through the yard in the opposite direction like a tracer round, past the chicken coop and drilled itself into a nearly-empty gas can over by the propane tank.

Bubba sat up and rubbed the dirt off his hands, retrieving his flask from the ground nearby. The gas can blew up. 

Bubba stood up as quick as he could and dusted the dirt off his overalls, waiting for what he feared would happen next.

When he heard the paint containers that had been piled next to the gas can start cooking off, he sprinted for the tool shed and the trailer parked beside it. Bubba may have been half in the bag, but he was no dummy. As he ran, he yelled to his wife who was serving dinner to the kids and Meemaw. "Darlene! Git the stuff and the kids and git to the truck!"

Darlene Johnson looked out the window, saw her husband go sprinting past the dilapidated double wide, saw the flames, heard the paint cans starting to blow and came to the same conclusion as Bubba. "Y'all youngins better finish up them vittles pronto, 'fore I count to three! One, two, three! Alright, now grab yer stuff and throw it in yer backpacks, 'cause we're hightailin' it to the truck!"

Meemaw calmly sat at the wobbly table and finished her cigarette.

When the propane tank went, it blew the chicken coop into the sky. The Johnsons were always short of everything - money, materials and luck, so Bubba had used the propane tank as the back wall of the coop with the hens' boxes on the top of it. Mercifully for the birds, they were killed instantly. More mercifully for the feral cats that lived in the woods surrounding the property, the sky began to rain partially-cooked chicken.

The cats, who regularly came over to the Johnsons to mooch food, looked at each other in wonder. As the chicken fell from the sky, they couldn't help but think they'd run out of all nine lives and were now in kitty heaven.

A partially-cooked chicken thigh landed on the hood of Bubba's rusty F-100 with a meaty SPLAT!

Chicken feathers wafted gently through the air.

Bubba was knocked off his feet by the blast, but he'd been expecting it. He was quickly up and reached the tool shed in no time at all. He ripped the door off its rotting frame, opened his trailer and shoved his best tools into it.

In the house, it was chaos. The kids first shoved the red beans and rice into their mouths and then shoved things into their backpacks. The Johnsons were always short of the goods of this world, but they were rarely short of smarts. Each swiftly packed as shrewdly as five people could possibly be expected to in such circumstances.

Bubba was three months behind on the rent. The double wide had received none of the promised maintenance from the landlord. With the calculated acumen and efficiency that is the hallmark of the South, both the Johnson's house and the landlord's finances were falling into ruin. Bubba knew this was the last straw and he had to get out of Verbena, Alabama or face charges for the destruction of property that, if auctioned off, couldn't have gone for more than $1.37.

Meemaw calmly went back to her bed and retrieved her massive purse. She checked its contents and saw what she expected to see. Alka Seltzer packets, some facial tissues, her cosmetics, some cigarette lighters, a couple packs of Camel Menthols and her handgun with a box of shells.

As Darlene and the kids swirled around her, she walked to the refrigerator, opened the freezer door at the top and pulled out her unopened carton of cigarettes. She walked out the door and got into the cab of the truck. She knew Darlene would pack her clothes for her as a well-bred Southern daughter ought to do.

Darlene called out, "Hey there, Bobbylee! Y'all take the keys and drive that ol' truck on over to your paw so he can hitch up that trailer right now!" She threw him the keys and he caught them in stride, having anticipated this moment. He ran to the truck, threw his backback in the back and jumped behind the wheel, nodding politely at Meemaw sitting in the middle of the bench seat.

Meemaw winked encouragingly at Bobbylee. "Boy, you should have see your Pawpaw and me git out of Hattiesburg after he stole me from that Mississippi lawyer. We had buckshot in our tailgate instead of tin cans on the bumper." Bobbylee wondered why he hadn't heard that story before and if any of it was true. Meemaw had a tendency to make her points with fictional melodramas from her past.

The truck's 352, one of the few things that could be trusted in the Johnson's world, roared to life. Bobbylee, 14, expertly drove the truck over to the trailer and backed it up so Paw could hook it to the trailer hitch. He jumped out the door to help.

Even though she ran this way and that packing things, Darlene kept her head and avoided the soft spot in the kitchen floor. She was convinced it had rotted out and if she stepped on it, she'd fall right through the cheap linoleum onto the dirt below. Darlene made sure to grab the tin can behind the sack of flour in the kitchen cabinet and pull out the roll of $100 bills tied up with a rubber band. It wasn't much, but it would get them where they were going.

In the truck's cab, Meemaw lit another cigarette.

Bubba had packed the cooler and with a mighty heave that wouldn't have been expected from his wiry frame, threw it into the back of the truck. 

TJ, 13, ran over and tossed his backpack in the truck along with some fishing poles and a tackle box. Betty Lou, 9, came over with her backpack and a small suitcase and daintily climbed in the bed of the truck.

Darlene rushed over and tossed a couple of beaten up suitcases in the bed of the truck. One of the latches flew open, disgorging clothes into the rusty bed.

TJ came back, threw in a pellet rifle and some boxes of ammo, climbed in the bed and put the clothes back in the suitcase, which he sat on to keep closed. The trailer attached, Bobbylee jumped into the back of the truck and squeezed in with the other kids and the family's goods. Bubba ran over to the truck, saw the rifle and yelled at TJ. "Throw that thang out! Y'all know we cain't be carryin' guns in the back of the truck! We'll just hafta git 'nother one later." 

TJ reluctantly tossed his rifle into the dirt as the truck sped down the dirt road and out onto highway 31 before the last of the chicken feathers fell to the ground.

The boys looked at each other and nodded. Their handguns were in their backpacks. Heck, Paw had one in the glove box, so what were a few more?

"We got kinfolk in Norf Caroliner and kinfolk in Indyanner," said Bubba to Meemaw and Darlene. "We'll flip a coin to see where we'll go." His wife nodded, but as he tossed a quarter in the air in the cab, Meemaw, with catlike quickness, swatted the coin out of the air and out the open window where it bounced on the pavement and was quickly lost behind them.

"We are not going to North Carolina. Billy Bob and Carol may be kinfolk, but I will not stay with them. They are barbarians."

"What in tarnation is wrong with Billy Bob and Carol?" asked Bubba in disbelief.

"That woman gets her roux from a jar," pronounced Meemaw with undisguised disgust as she took another drag on her cigarette.

In the back of the truck, Betty Lou looked at her older brothers with an air of superiority. "I am clothed with strength and dignity; I can laugh at the two of you. I speak with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on my tongue."

Bobbylee looked at her in confusion. "What?"

"I have packed with wisdom and grace, while you two have packed with no more sense than God gave the possum."

TJ replied with a look of scorn and asked, "Whut on Earth could ya have packed that was so good?"

Betty Lou opened her backpack and took out a dark brown disc wrapped in cellophane.

In unison, the boys said, "A Moon Pie!"

With a look of complete satisfaction, Betty Lou calmly unwrapped the chocolate-covered cake and marshmallow treat, tossed the wrapper onto the highway and smiled at the boys. She haughtily turned her head away from them to watch the countryside going by, munching on her Moon Pie in triumph.

The boys opened the cooler to see what was inside. They grinned at each other. In the cab, Darlene watched them through the rearview mirror and could read their minds. She shouted back at them, "Boys! Only one each!"

Bobbylee reached into the cooler and brought out two Cokes, leaving the Budweisers for Maw and Paw. He handed one to his brother and they leaned back on the cab of the truck and sipped. They could hear their parents singing "Trashy Women" as it played on the stereo and the truck sped down the road.