In the summer of 1975 Jowls and I spent a month riding around the country by bus and collecting butterflies. Maybe it’s not what average teenagers do in the summer, but it sounded fun to us. We each bought a Greyhound “Ameripass” for $150, and that allowed us to get on any bus, headed anywhere in the whole country, anytime, for 30 days.

Since neither of us had much money left after we bought the bus pass, our itinerary included lots of stops to visit relatives. But our visit to Uncle Barney and Aunt Ruth’s house in Florida was by far the most noteworthy. Partly because there were billions of butterflies where they lived. And partly because of who was there.

You already know what Uncle Barney is like, so I don’t have to spend a lot of time on that.

When we first showed up at his house, Barney took one look at me and said “I thought John was coming, not his sister!” Grandpa Fuller used to tease me about my long hair too. He used to tell me I looked like a girl. I would tell him it was a shame he couldn’t grow hair anymore.

Anyway, once I persuaded Barney that I was actually John, I introduced him to Jowls. Barney shook hands with Jowls with a very solemn look and said, “Joel, come in here and sit down for a minute, I want to talk to you.” Puzzled, Jowls followed him into the den. “Do you fellas need a drink?” he asked. We both shook our heads. “Joel,” he said, “I have a very serious question for you.” Long pause. “Tell me, do you think you’ll ever amount to anything?”

I had warned Jowls about Uncle Barney, so he was ready. “I just hope that one day I’ll have accomplished one tenth of what you’ve done in your lifetime, sir,” said Jowls.

“John,” said Uncle Barney, staring at Jowls, “your friend is welcome to stay.”

Next we met Barney’s daughter, Barbara, who was in the kitchen cooking hot dogs. She was boiling up five of them, and she explained, somewhat embarrassed, that they were all for her, but she’d cook more if we wanted some. She was on a new diet where she ate nothing but meat. No buns, no ketchup or mustard, nothing else, just meat—in this case, five hot dogs for lunch.

No one else was home at the moment, so we excused ourselves and went out butterfly hunting. We returned a few hours later, sweaty and tired, our collection jars brimming with freshly chloroformed specimens. Aunt Ruth was in the kitchen, and after welcoming us she admired our butterflies and asked us to go out onto the porch and show them to her mother, Mrs. Flaherty.

We went and introduced ourselves to Mrs. Flaherty, who was about 85. She took one look at our butterflies and exclaimed, “My, what pretty birds! Wherever did you find them?” She had a New England accent so her “bird” sounded more like “buhhd.”

We explained that they were in fact butterflies, not birds, and that we’d spent all afternoon collecting them.

“Not very lively buhhds, are they?” she said.

We explained that they were in fact quite dead.

“Ah, poor dears,” she said. “Wherever did you find such pretty buhhds?”

Jowls and I glanced at each other, sensing that there may be issues here, and after a few more minutes politely excused ourselves.

And we couldn’t help it: for the rest of that trip, and in fact for years afterward, we always referred to our butterflies as “pretty buhhds.”