Bubba was always chewing Mail Pouch tobacco. He was also a horse trainer, cuttin’ horse to be exact. It was ‘long about the middle sixties that he got this little cow bred mare in for training. The owner wanted her shown in the cutting at the Fat Stock Show in Houston, as it was called in them days.

Well, after starting the mare on cattle for a month or so, she commenced having a problem. She was “charging.“ She would keep creeping forward into a cow she was working, one of the cardinal sins of contest cutting. So Bubba made him a device to stop that. It consisted of a lightweight chain they went over the mare’s head, passing down through the bridle to a ring on the breast collar, and up to the saddle horn. He called it his “brain chain.” When she went to chargin’ cattle he’d bump the chain and she’d back off. But, right before he bumped it he’d spit tobacco right between her ears. It got so that if he spit, she quit, even without the chain after a while.
Well he went to Houston and entered the cuttin’, and of course right in the middle of the second cow, on a really good run, he felt her starting to charge. Bubba spit between her ears and she jumped back like she’d been shocked. He won the cutting, but the judge came to him afterwards and said

“Bubba, I give it to ya, ‘cause it was a good run. But ya did somethin’. I didn’t see what ye did, but I know you did somethin’. But if I ever find out what ye done, I’ll wring yore neck! “