Buff Beach Bodies
Daily Prompt
Buff
Write a new post in response to today’s one-word prompt.
Buff the Blues Buff the Shoes
Buford was a young boy from the country, they had no neighbors for miles. Buford loved to run around in the buff as a little boy, his little body was brown as a berry from top to bottom. Young Buford loved the country life but as he saw more movies on Saturday night at the movie theater in town, his thoughts wandered to Sunny California. He fell in love with the movie stars in California, young and beautiful, buff bodies at all the ocean beaches. His mind made up, still a teenager, he just had to go and seek his fortune on the Gold Coast. “Go West Young Man,” as Horace Greeley said. Buford had read that someplace, now it was his time to take action. “GO WEST, YOUNG MAN, GO WEST” was an expression first used by John Babsone Lane Soule in the Terre Haute Express in 1851. It appealed to Horace Greeley, who rephrased it slightly in an editorial in the New York Tribune on 13 July 1865: “Go West, young man, and grow up with the country.”
Young Buford went West hitchhiking and catching rides on freight cars, he arrived at the Pacific coast ready for action. He found out work was very hard to find, he got a janitor job sweeping up at one of the movie studios. He soon realized that was as close as he was going to get to the movie stars. He didn’t think his chances of being discovered there with his talents was very good. The young and beautiful did go to the beaches, he mingled with all the buff bodies playing volleyball in the sand, frolicking in the ocean and just plain having a good time 24/7.
Buford soon realized the young ladies at the beach were not paying very close attention to him, he didn’t think he was that bad looking, he had to come up with a plan. That evening on the way home he stopped by the market and asked for a baking potato, a fairly long one. The store manager asked, “Are you sure you only want just one potato?” Buford replied, “that will be just fine.” The next time he went to the beach, Buford placed that potato in the front of his swimming trunks, it was as if a magic wand and been passed over him, the buff, young girls were all looking at him very closely now.
Young Buford couldn’t get a decent steady job, so he decided to join the Army, he was quickly sent off to boot camp, to the world he had no idea existed. It was certainly a new way of life for the young Farm Boy to become accustomed to. One thing he did like about it, after standing in the chow line the food was well worth it and you could eat all you wanted. Buford took to the chow hall very quickly.
One thing Buford was not very comfortable with was being yelled at and taking orders from a drill instructor, who seemed to dislike the young fellow from day one. Buford was told to shine and buff his pair of boots until they shine like two mirrors. He worked for hours, used the whole can of Polish, plus lots of spit and many rags and buffed and buffed. He finally ended up with a shoe shine that he was very proud of, he could actually see his face on the toes of his boots. He was ready for any inspection the ornery old drill instructor was ready to give. Sure enough that same morning after close order drill they had an inspection.
G I Shoe Shine
The Drill instructor looked down at Buford’s boots and asked, “Is that as good a shine as you can buff out?” “You better learn to buff your shoe shine a lot better than that, buff, buff, the buff is what it’s all about” Then he stepped on one of Buford shoes and wiggled his foot back and forth and completely destroyed the shoeshine Buford had spent days working on. Buford asked, “Why did you go and do that?” Then the Drill instructor did the same thing to his other shoe. Buford suddenly became bitter with buff!
I’m certainly no psychologist or war expert but I would think there must be a better way to get the troops mad enough to want to fight.
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