Locals called Buddy’s place “The Temple” because, as one prominent church lady sniffed disapprovingly, “The name of Our Dear Brother Jesus is spoken there more often than at the First Baptist, even though it is always in vain!”
Buddy Sattva had attained nirvana as far as his personal cosmology was concerned.
After his folks died and he dropped out of high school, he was left with only three problems:
- He loved deer meat but was too lazy to hunt.
- He loved beer but got too drunk to drive home.
- He loved socializing or “shooting the shit” as he called it, but see #2.
So he started his own home-based business.
First, he and his buddies moved an abandoned boxcar from the derelict railroad depot downtown to the property his parents had left him. This was not easy and required vast amounts of beer, nobody could remember how much, and as a result nobody could remember exactly how they’d accomplished it especially since it was done in the middle of the night.
The boxcar fit right in next to Buddy’s doublewide. He equipped it with a walk-in cooler and a cutting table and hung up a sign with the silhouettes of two deer heads complete with six-point antlers over the name of his business: Two Bucks Deer Cooler and Smokehouse.
TO BE CONTINUED…