Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 26, 1995 TAG: 9510260004
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY
DATELINE: STEWARTSVILLE LENGTH: Long
This explains why the young Bowyer came down with no fewer than 126 warts on his hands and feet. ``Frog pee causes warts,'' he says.
Enter Jim Bowyer - a.k.a. ``Walking Jim'' - a distant kin who wandered around the county, homeless. When Walking Jim saw Clifton's warts, the old man picked up a stick, wrote the number 126 in the dirt yard, mumbled something and left.
Clifton's warts soon vanished too.
It was the Depression-era '30s, when home remedies outweighed Compound W, and nicknames were about as common as empty pockets. ``Back then, you had a nickname when you growed up, period,'' Clifton Bowyer, now 67, says.
Thus, young Clifton became forever ``Frog.'' This explains why the retired carpenter's house is chock full of nearly 200 frogs. Most of them inanimate.
A voice-activated frog band jams to Willie Nelson doing Elvis doing ``Blue Suede Shoes.'' A Kermit the Frog decanter dispenses mint-green toothpaste (mmmmm).
There are frog sunglasses, a talking-frog fish lure and even a genuine stuffed frog wearing a sombrero. ``I have a skirt with a frog on it, and he has a shirt with frogs,'' explains his wife, Hilda. ``So he could put my skirt on'' and have an entire frog outfit, theoretically. But she wouldn't bet the frog farm on him ever doing it.
The Bowyers' entertaining frog museum comes courtesy of the Bowyer family, especially daughter Brenda, who has hauled fake frogs back to her dad from as far away as Hawaii and Kentucky.
Incidentally, Clifton has three brothers and four sisters. Lewis is called ``Jeter.'' Guy goes by ``Chicken.'' Dan's nickname is ``Smith,'' and Annie goes by ``Doots.''
Eula, naturally, is ``Ice.'' Dorothy's moniker is ``Dot.'' And Lois goes by ``Bea'' or ``Aunt Bea'' or sometimes even ``Bea-Lee.''
In 1990, Clifton rescued an abandoned baby deer, tamed him and kept him for a year. The deer was named ``Bubba'' after Bowyer's grandson, Bubba - whose real name is Brandon.
SOUTH ROANOKE - And speaking of frogs . . . or, as we say in French, frrrrogs, Vickie Bibee is a woman after my own heart.
I am a woman who has a master's degree, but only by the skin of my dents, by the kindness of professor Richard Dillard's heart, and by the people who graded my French foreign-language equivalency exam - and LAUGHED OUT LOUD.
Meaning, neither Vickie nor I speak a lick of French, as we say in Big Lick.
But did that keep Bibee from saying oui when a friend asked her if she would host an elderly French couple during a recent French-group exchange? Non.
Comedy of Errors, Act 1: Bibee has to leave the house for a work emergency, but explains to the couple that a une petite femme avec les cheveux noirs - a small lady with black hair - will pick them up shortly for the day's activities. She forgets to explain that another small lady with black hair is also arriving to pick up her 5-year-old son, Holt, for the carpool.
The French couple, of course, is hell-bent on getting in the station wagon full of screaming kids, which confuses the petite dark-haired car-pooler. However, when the real chauffeur arrives to take them to their appointment - and has salt-and-pepper hair, instead of strictly black - they are not easily coaxed.
Comedy of Errors, Act 2: Later the same day, a French student arrives to take them to Stewartsville for dinner - which Bibee had also forgotten to mention. The French couple, totally confused, look up the word ``kidnap'' in their French-English dictionary.
Comedy of Errors, Act 3: The next night, Bibee takes them to Tanglewood Mall to shop for Levi's cinq cent un - 501 jeans, which they want to buy for their grandchild. In a stroke of genius, she also suggests they eat at K&W Cafeteria, so they can see the food and point to it without having to order it.
Bibee takes along her son, who unknowingly brings with him a secret weapon: a stomach virus, which is activated at the precise moment the French couple spots the 501 jeans. He vomits on Bibee - and several stacks of jeans at J.C. Penney, County Seat and Leggett - before the correct size is located.
The troupe is a no-show at K&W. But dinner that night is rescued by Bibee's neighbor, Paula Irons, who can both cook and speak French, and charms the French couple with her fabulous plastic yellow hat.
Comedy of Errors, Act 4 (Or, yes, there's more): Bibee is up at midnight the night before the French couple is set to depart. She is preparing a breakfast casserole to serve before they leave at 7:30 a.m.
A huge thump is heard upstairs. Followed by, ``Madame! Madame!'' The French woman runs screaming into her kitchen.
Bibee's guest-room closet organizer has fallen over - on the woman's husband. Bibee and her husband, Tim, rescue him from under several layers of clothes.
``I'm sure they're back home right now, thinking, `Americans are INSANE,' '' Bibee says. In thanking the Bibees for their hospitality, the French couple said, through an interpreter: ``Her husband is very handsome, but she is simple and gay.''
``I said to the interpreter, `What does that mean?' and he said, `That you live a simple life and you laugh all the time.' ''
The Bibees - and their English-French dictionary - have since been invited to the couple's home in France. But as the grader of my French-translation test once said:
HAAAAAA!
by CNB