He Could’ve Stayed at Home

Today your compiler is going to talk ugly.  He doesn’t mean bathroom words, those which our mamas would have called vulgar and washed our mouths out with soap for saying.   Rather, he is talking “mud fences” and “backing freight trains up dirt roads” ugly.

He’s talking “she must have taken a long dip in the ugly pond” kind of ugly.   “Stop a clock” ugly.   “Ugly as homemade sin” unattractive – whatever homemade sin is; a concept we shall discuss in the next column.   Ugly, as the late Lewis Grizzard said of Gloria Vanderbilt (she of the 1980s designer jeans), “as an empty glass of buttermilk.”

Alabama author Rick Bragg tells the story, in one of his marvelous books, of a man sitting around a campfire with his buddies, lamenting that his wife is not  beautiful woman.  “Beauty,” one of his compatriots told him, “is only skin deep.”   The group sat in silence for a few minutes digesting this tired old morsel, and then the first man got up and walked off.   “Where’re you goin’?” his buddies called out to him.   

“Home,” the man replied, “to skin my wife.”

Gilbert and Sullivan even wrote a comic opera about ugly, or at least significantly featuring it.   It’s called The Pirates of Penzance, and early in it we meet Frederick, a dashingly handsome escaped pirate apprentice who desperately wishes to marry.   Coming upon a bevy of young women, he asks in song a couple of ways if any of them will marry him.  Finding no takers, he then asks (still in song, of course), “Oh, is there not one maiden here, whose homely face and bad complexion has caused all hope to disappear of ever winning man’s affection?  To such a one, if such there be,  I swear by Heaven’s arch above you, if you will cast your eyes on me, however plain you be I’ll love you.”  And this he meets Mabel, who can sing like an angel but who apparently has a face like a gargoyle.

We have all known people who met these descriptions, bless their hearts.  Some might say, “Poor thing.  He can’t help being ugly, but it seems like he could’ve at least stayed home,” meaning, of course, that he may not can help his unfortunate physiognomy, but to go out in public looking like that is something he really ought to avoid whenever possible. 

Or one fellow might say to another, “Bubba’s a nice-looking fellow, but I can’t figure out what he’s doing with a wife as ugly as his is.” 

“She’s rich,” replies the second.

“Oh,” answers the first, “I reckon he realizes that looks fade, but interest accrues.”

Or, “See that fat, weather-beaten, grey-headed fellow right there?  Can you believe he’s just 63 years old?   He looks 85!   I mean, man, within just the past few weeks, he’s been accused of having graduated high school the year before he was born, been accused of being married to his mother, and received a gratuitous 65-and-over discount at a store by a clerk who didn’t ask but just assumed.   How does one get that ugly in just 63 years??

Whoa, boy! That’s getting a little personal.  “Langford must have heard that before,” you’re probably saying to yourself.   Well, the truth is, Langford has heard it all before, but like the Kingfish on the old TV show used to say, he denies the allegation and resents the alligator.

Ugly as it is, that’s the truth.