A reporter that gets it.

Link

By Robb Reeves

The camera quickly found him.Robb Reeves

He was a bigger man, a little overweight, with a full beard and wearing camouflage. We saw him on our TV screens standing in thigh-deep water in the rain. We saw him drive his fishing boat down a freeway, carry people in his arms, and sometimes he just stared at his beleaguered city.

Bubba was the first responder in Houston and thank God he was there. Bubba shows up. He has been showing up to weddings, work, funerals, birthdays, and football games most of his life. He is the guy you borrow a socket wrench from when you can’t find yours.

When tragedies the size of Hurricane Harvey happen, the government, no matter how much bigger we make it year after year, is too small to help. When the water overwhelmed the nation’s fourth largest city, leaders cried for assistance and Bubba came.

Bubba didn’t plan for this day. He was supposed to be at the plant, working first shift. Yet his boat was ready and he launched into waters that carried snakes, fire ants, millions of bacteria and submerged cars. No one told him to go. No one offered Bubba money. He just did what he could.

We saw Bubba haul hundreds of people out of Houston’s high waters. This wasn’t a Coast Guard operation. It was just Bubba and his cousins and his mortgaged boat churning above Houston concrete on what has to be the weirdest day in Bubba’s life.

When the boat was under throttle and flying down Houston streets, the Bubbas grinned a little. As kids they dreamed of doing this.

Bubba did a few interviews when the cameras came up to him. But he didn’t say much, and never really does. He isn’t sure he trusts the media and any time spent talking to a reporter means less time on the water.

Bubba wondered about his own family. Were his kids dry? Was his wife scared? She told him not to do this but Bubba needed to get out of the house.

Bubba wonders when he will get to eat Houston’s fantastic Mexican food on a normal Friday night and drink a cold beer. When he starts to think about what all has happened this week, he gets a little overwhelmed and looks for another family to pick up. What he does after the flood is too much to think about today. In a county of 4.6 million people, he just keeps picking up people he doesn’t know and putting them in his boat. The people clustered in the boat are drenched, cold and clinging to trash bags of belongings.

The last 10 years have been tough for Bubba. The people he doesn’t understand want to take away his job. He is being outsourced to China, India or replaced by Silicon Valley robots. Bubba doesn’t know how to stop the tide of change coming at him that is much stronger than Harvey.

He is the guy the manager asks to come in early when a machine is broken at the factory. He is the guy we ordered to pull the trigger in Iraq.

When he goes in to buy a new four-wheeler, Bubba is reminded that his credit score isn’t what it used to be. Even if he could get the four-wheeler he wants, there aren’t places to ride it anymore and little time. His life is more about working at the plant and hoping his wife can string together a series of payments every month. In fact, he might be behind a month on the boat payment.

When the waters of Harvey recede, Bubba’s same old problems will be there plus new ones he can’t think about right now.

Bubba can drive an airboat as good as anyone. He can read water, service an outboard motor, and catch a limit of catfish. But the world doesn’t place much value on those things anymore.

Bubba is disappearing. He notices his son is more interested in staring at his phone than repairing the riding lawnmower. Bubba wonders how much longer he can keep paying for his F-150, the four-wheeler and a boat.

But for a few days in Houston, we needed Bubba and his boat and his skills.

Don’t praise FEMA, the governor, the president or the mayor.

Just be glad we had Bubba.

God bless Bubba.

ALL the Bubbas!

flashguy

Hear Hear!! Will raise a toast to ALL the Bubbas out there!

There's something wonderfully disfunctional about us- God Bless America.

Hee Hee...there is a little bubba in all of us.

For me, the "Bubbas" were and still are the story of Houston. They were there first, on their own dime and their own time, taking the risks while cold and wet and hungry and, I suspect, also a little bit scared. They've performed day after day after day of critical community service with a few miracles sprinkled in here and there along with the monotonous heavy-lift grunt work and made it all work beautifully without government bureaucrats inserted into the middle of their amazing effort telling them what they couldn't/shouldn't do while they were essentially putting on a clinic about how to conduct a large scale emergency response when guidelines and rules have already washed downstream.

Call them the Cajun Navy, Bubbas, whatever, these guys are - yet again - heroes and I've no doubt they'll - yet again - be the first on the scene the next time catastrophe calls. God bless 'em all. They saved lives.

Another thing to add, not only were these guys here on their own dime, they were beating up their boats and vehicles helping others. I've seen pics of props that are chewed up from hitting brick mailboxes, tops of cars, signs etc. Junk in the water takes a toll on the vehicles and boats. Yet, there were lines of people waiting to volunteer. We will band together and forget our differences when we need to in order to help one another. We can do what our government cannot.

That furniture store owner that's helping people seems like a great guy, too.

Kind of sappy bullshit if you ask me. I know plenty of guys this writer tried to make a point about and it's clear to me this guy doesn't know any personally. It's like when some media douche writes about guns, anyone with casual knowledge of the subject can see the dependece on stereotypes to infer an understanding that clearly isn't there.

Bubba isn't one kind of guy, never has been. Bubba doesn't just work at "the plant". Around here, Bubba is anything from a tow truck driver to a CEO and everything in between. Sorry to poop on everyone's feel good moment but the whole article is a horse shit attempt to tie the valient efforts of a broad cross section of people, that the author clearly doesn't understand, to some political point. Above all else those folks down there pulling thier neighbors out of the flood were Texans with varying amounts of Bubba in each of them. And believe me, Bubba still has plenty of places to ride his four wheeler in Texas and his kids can still catch a limit of catfish right along side him

If you want to learn about Bubba, here he is in his own words as posted on another board where I hang out. He lives in a college town, works out I a cross fit gym and works as a computer programmer:

"Y'all aren't going to believe this, but last night, I killed a 180lb sow with my bow. In the middle of a strip mall parking lot, during search and rescue operations here in Houston.

It was large, aggressive, and cornered itself very close to where rescuers and evacuees were exiting the floodwaters, posing a significant risk to all involved.

Thankfully, despite the contradictory forces of both exhaustion and adrenaline, I was able to place a perfect heart shot on it, and it didn't make it but ten feet from where it was hit to where it died.

The best part of this story is that after staying up until 4am doing all of the processing of the meat, our evacuees at the church I'm working out of here in Cypress will have fresh carnitas to help warm their spirits after the terrible week they've had to endure.

I'm so thankful that I was in the right place at the right time, to be able to serve the community, neutralize a threat, and help evangelize the virtues that we hunters hold so dear, as stewards, protectors and providers.

.
.
.
#hurricaneharvey #bowhunting #hoghunting #carnitas"

Wait.... didn't someone describe Bubba as "deplorable" a while back?

quote:

Originally posted by WaterburyBob:
That furniture store owner that's helping people seems like a great guy, too.

"Mattress Mack" (Jim McIngvale, owner of Gallery Furniture) has been a Houston institution for about 30 years. He works hard, still takes the time to talk to customers despite running a pretty big chain of furniture stores, does a lot of philanthropic work, and is genuinely a nice guy.

quote:

Originally posted by TXJIM:
Kind of sappy bullshit if you ask me.

Someone is acknowledging kind works, and saying thank you in a public way. As the imperfect press goes, this is welcome. PLenty of other places to be cynical.

quote:

Originally posted by jigray3:

quote:

Originally posted by TXJIM:
Kind of sappy bullshit if you ask me.

Someone is acknowledging kind works, and saying thank you in a public way. As the imperfect press goes, this is welcome. PLenty of other places to be cynical.

I was right there with you until all the bullshit about poor credit, unappreciated lifestyle, declining places to ride his fourwheeler This writer wasn't acknowledging anything but a bunch of stereotypes in an effort to make some point about the declining position of the blue collar guy. If the writer knew anything about the people in those camo waders he is trying to pigeon hole he wouldn't have sounded like an ignorant condescending asshole in the process.

I don't care about stereotypes, or journalist opinions, or any of that twaddle. All this story reaffirmed in me is my steadfast belief that 'we' truly don't need government 'if' we all have the right attitude and focus on helping each other when that help is necessary. I'd never heard of the 'Cajun Navy' before this hurricane, and still don't know everything about them, but what I do know impresses the hell out of me.

May god bless and be with 'all' of those on the ground in Texas, regardless their backgrounds or social standing.

God bless all the Bubbas out there. We will never meet them but would like to thank them for their unselfish work they have done and will do. Just be safe and continue to do your blessed work!

On the news one day the Indian reporter was in the boat driven by a white guy (you know, as the media calls them, a "racist redneck") with a black guy in the boat helping pluck a Chinese man out of the flood.

A lot of these people will be buying new props and rebuilding motors (on their own dime) once this phase finally ends. Those I have met here don't even expect to be so much as thanked for their efforts. They just do it because it's the right thing, the humane thing, to do.

Are there flaws and stereotypes in this story? Sure. But it's a 'reporter' (are there any real ones any more?) trying to comprehend some things that are outside their understanding. Those being:
1: Not every white guy is a member of the KKK
2: People can solve problems themselves far better than any gub-mint program

I bet more than 1 truck or boat trailer had a Confederate Flag sticker on it and it didn't matter.