Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 24, 1994 TAG: 9410240084
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHLEEN WILSON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The man eschews the very bedrock of political fund raising; never goes to those highfalutin zillions-of-dollars-a-plate dinners. Or cocktail parties.
Just try imagining Oliver North in a tux. Does not compute.
You don't have to be a Madison Avenue whiz to decipher just whom North is targeting in his TV commercials.
His message is so simple. It's just plain, ``Golly, I'm Ollie.''
That, and, shucks, he'd sure like your vote.
That is, we've figured, if you're a Bubba.
Yes, North may be the very first Virginia politician to launch such a doubled-barreled campaign for the Bubba vote.
We thought we'd see just how successfully all these plaid-shirted and rolled-up shirt-sleeve images have reached his people.
His Bubbas. Let's ask people named Bubba if they are going to vote for North.
One problem: Locating Bubbas.
Seems Bubbas are, well, covert people.
``They're like Clint Eastwood,'' Tonya Tyree of Roanoke tried to explain. ``They're low-key. They don't get riled up about much.
``By the way,'' she wanted to know of her husband. ``How did you find out he is a Bubba?''
We have our sources.
Tonya served as official spokeswoman for her husband, Robey ``Bubba'' Tyree, the only Bubba out of the mere seven we managed to come up with, after scouring most of Southwest Virginia for the better part of a month, who even spoke with us.
But only through his wife. Bubba Tyree refused to come to the phone.
``No comment,'' he kept repeating as this patient woman with an adventurous spirit did her darnedest to get her Bubba to talk with us.
``No comment.''
Tonya understands her husband.
``You have to be very proud and able to defend yourself when you're a Bubba,'' she explained. ``A lot of people think of being a Bubba as being a backward thing.''
That's just not true, she said.
Maybe most of the world just doesn't understand exactly what a Bubba is.
We located two experts.
But even that was a struggle.
``I don't have a comment for you on that,'' David Garst of Salem's All Huntin-N-Fishin Store answered when asked to explained what a Bubba was.
But Andy Ratliff - of Henry's Gun and Tackle in Vinton - and Scott Baird - associate professor of linguistics at Trinity University in Texas - finally came through.
Bubba pundits, if you will.
``Bubbas are just a bunch of good ol' guys,'' Andy explained. ``It's sort of a greeting, you know, `Hey, Bubba.'''
Sort of like how one woman might address another as, ``Hey, girlfriend!''?
``Exactly,'' he said. ``It isn't because they're big or dumb or anything. A Bubba is a friend.''
Baird was able to provide us with the definitive Bubba.
It's a term with roots in slavery, first heard among a group of slaves who escaped on a boat off the coast of South Carolina.
``They called each other Bubba,'' Baird elaborated. ``It meant `brother.' Buddy. Friend.''
It was in the '70s that Bubba became a more tainted moniker.
That was about the time blacks began calling one another ``bro.''
``Then the Klan began calling each other `Bubba,''' Baird said. ``One associates the Klan with many things, but one is certainly with being a redneck.''
Since then, Bubbas have become more private, almost defensive of a term that to most of them simply means "friend."
Although Baird has not seen North's ``Bubba'' commercials, he says - linguistically - going for the ``Bubba vote'' is far wiser than we Virginians realize.
You can't judge a Bubba by his plaid shirt. Or his fishing pole.
``The Irish, among other things, gave us bourbon and country music,'' Baird said. ``And grandchildren called their Irish grandfathers `Bubba.'''
Yes, even this reporter of Irish descent is kin to a Bubba. Her father was known as ``Bubbub'' among his grandchildren for reasons no one ever questioned or quite understood.
Though no Bubba we spoke with would go on the record, most of them explained somewhat shyly that most had acquired the nickname when a younger sister or brother was unable to say the word ``brother.''
Perhaps we were naive to think we'd be able to sum up the ``Bubba vote'' with attempts to speak with seven men named Bubba.
``Because we're all Bubbas in one way or another,'' Tonya Tyree repeated to us over the phone from her Bubba in the background.
The Political Party is an occasional column about the more offbeat social and cultural aspects of Virginia's Senate race.
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