plez robinson hubbard. an obituary.
Plez Hubbard died last week. That wont mean a thing to you. Unless you live on the mountain…or used to. My mom called and said ‘they found him in his car’ and that someone had made out he’d been there for a while.
But he hadn’t. His obituary showed up too soon for that.
I’m not sure what sort of man he was. I knew him well when I was a kid, saw him just about every day of my life back then. But I never paid much attention to him after I grew up. And it takes growing up to really look at a person sometimes. I never did that.
Plez wore overalls. Drove a tractor. Worked in a cemetery. He hung pigs from trees to drain in old cast iron bath tubs. Our dog got hold of a hog’s head Plez had sawed off once. Carried it around our yard for days. My mom went crazy.
Plez never aged. He always looked 80 even though he never lived to see it.
When I look back at my time on the mountain, all those years I spent pining for somewhere else, thinking I don’t belong in a holler on a hillside, when that was exactly where I belonged because there’s always a purpose to our place, Plez is one of the defining images.
Plez Robinson Hubbard. Dead at 78.
Boy, what a name.