I was looking at a copy of a handwritten document from the 1930 census and saw the list of my grandfather’s children. The census taker wrote down the names of my father’s brothers and sisters and I laughed when I saw the legal name of my uncle, “Bub.”
My father was seven and his brother, Bub, was three in 1930. When I was young, my family spent a lot of time around my uncle, aunt and cousins. We lived in the same area of Pittsburgh, Penn., and during the times we lived with my grandfather and grandmother, uncle Bub would visit. There was a rumor among the cousins that our uncle’s real name was not “Bub.” We would pretend innocence in asking, “What is your real name?” He would bark at us: “It’s BUB!”
The husband of the first sitter for my two youngest children used to tell me that he always wanted a daughter that he could name “Loretta.” He said that he would have called her “Retter.” He also took great delight in teaching Lauryn to call her brother “Bubba.” Lauryn never learned “Bubba,” but she still calls her brother (Chris) “Bubby,” or “Bub.”
“Hey, Bub” is a greeting I hear in the bars and pool halls that line the roads I travel. I imagine that it can also be heard in ballrooms and concert halls, but I shoot pool, so I spend more time in the places that cater to my avocation. The designation is often used as a place-holder for when the greeter has lost the name; it is also used as a term of “man-dearment,” a way for men to camouflage affection. Kind of like, when men hug, they do so briefly, and the hugs are then punctuated with two or three robust and cough-inducing slaps on the man-backs.
My son Chris will never introduce himself by any name other than “Chris.” I have always called him “Christopher,” and his music-making “nom” is “Chree,” which is the sound his mother makes when she is screaming for him. But “Bub” is reserved exclusively for his mother and two sisters, Lauryn and Lisa. (As for names: “Lauryn’s” real name is spelled “Lauren.” She decided to change it.) Lisa is 15 years older than Lauryn and was amused to hear her little sister call their brother “Bub.” She embraced the name and joined the two other females who use it.
The two Bubs of my life have little in common outside of the last name, Woods. My uncle is a small man, about 5’ 6’’; my son is a tall man, in the 6’ 2” area. My uncle grew up in a blasted and angry family, and I believe that my son did not.
As for my Uncle Bub, I learned a long time ago that his real name is “Ulysses.” But because my grandparents were semi-literate, the name they had recorded was “Eulicious,” the spelling that appears on the handwritten 1930 census document. As someone with the first name of “Clement,” who has heard “Oh my darling Clementine” in the schoolyards of my youth, I can only imagine what miseries “Ell-you-ish-iss” might have suffered. In any case, he is known in my family, now and forever more, as Bub. But when I hear the name, I do not think of my father’s brother.
My youngest daughter, who spent her early days trying to torture her brother, will only give you his name when asked, “What is his name?” Her casual reference to the brother she loves is “Bub,” and her family knows that person and that love.