Our name is the Butt-Ugly Club of America.
BUCA.
There are five of us, which tells you immediately that our admission standards aren't particularly demanding.
We've been friends for more than 50 years. Tomorrow, one of us turns 59; he's the surveyor, and his birthday starts the procession. Before long, all five members of this highly questionable organization will have reached the same age.
That seems impossible.
Last night, three members of BUCA met at the Texas Roadhouse in Wausau, which was about a 45-minute drive for each of us.
We ate, talked, laughed, and probably told stories we've already heard several dozen times.
Nothing remarkable happened.
Driving home, I realized how remarkable that was.
As I've said, there are five of us. One became a public school teacher, another spent his working life as a line electrician in a large plant, one became a surveyor, and another owns a funeral home with three locations and knows better than most of us that the clock eventually runs out.
Then there's me.
I became the writer, which means somebody had to document the crimes.
We're not exactly five peas from the same pod.
Two are Catholic, two are Lutheran, and among us is a rainbow of political opinions. One of the guys can't stand Scott Walker; others among us voted for Walker more than once.
Somehow, civilization survived.
We established one rule years ago without ever needing to put it in writing: we don't talk politics.
And we haven't.
That's part of why we're still friends.
We never needed agreement on elections to decide whether somebody would help when the car broke down, show up when life went sideways, or sit across a restaurant table decades later and laugh until somebody's ribs hurt.
Last night was actually one of the rare exceptions: we wandered into Wisconsin's governor's race.
The great BUCA political consensus of 2026?
None of us is particularly impressed.
Then, presumably recognizing the danger of destroying half a century of friendship over politicians who wouldn't recognize any of us in the grocery store, we moved along.
However, our judgment, at times, wasn't exactly on par with, well, normal people.
The two guys I sat with once ran over a skunk while riding their bikes in the mid-1980s. They were, of course, sprayed, and it happened about a half-mile from my house.
We were their first stop and they smelled so skunky that it woke my dad out of a sound sleep. I lived the furthest east in town, and they stopped at the homes of all our friends on their way home.
They were kicked out of several backyards with prejudice.
When the surveyor arrived at home, his mom kicked him outside and told him to strip (it was dark out, thank God) and start showering.
Collectively, we're not a panel on a nightly news show. Your mileage may vary.
Three of us have been divorced. We've buried people we loved, watched children grow up, worried about money, suffered disappointments, changed jobs, faced illness, made mistakes, and carried scars the boys we once were couldn't have imagined.
And yet, somehow, we're still friends.
We can go weeks without talking, sometimes months. Nobody sends an offended message demanding to know why he hasn't heard from the others. An unofficial joke is that we always get the birthdate wrong, by weeks at times.
Then somebody calls, and within 30 seconds, we're kids again.
That's a rare kind of wealth.
I didn't always understand it. There was a long period of my life when things became very dark; I was struggling, badly, and I don't think I understood at the time just how bad.
These guys were there. They didn't hold an intervention, they didn't deliver inspirational speeches, and they didn't fix anything, because they were simply there.
Only after my life improved did I begin to understand what that meant. Looking backward from safer ground, I can see something I couldn't see while I was fighting my way through it.
I don't know that I'd be here without them, something that's hard for me to write.
But it's also true.
Maybe that's why last night's ordinary dinner landed differently.
A few weekends ago, I went camping with my two oldest daughters and their families: the first camping trip for my three grandsons.
There I was, watching another generation experience something for the first time while I'm approaching 59 with friends I've known since we were children.
Within a few weeks, I had sat with grandchildren around a campfire with grandchildren beginning their memories and old friends carrying more than half a century of mine.
That's quite a thing when you think about it.
Perhaps we don't think about it enough.
In today's America, we're encouraged to chase the next thing: the next job, the next purchase, the next achievement, or the next outrage on a glowing screen.
Meanwhile, life's best moments have an irritating habit of showing up without announcing themselves.
Incredibly, though, those moments are everywhere. They're sitting around a campfire; they're a grandson experiencing something for the first time; they're three old friends in a restaurant booth laughing about something nobody else in the building would understand.
They're also people who can disagree about religion, politics, presidents, governors, unions, taxes, schools, and probably a dozen other things without deciding the person across the table has suddenly become an enemy.
Maybe we've forgotten how to do some of that.
I have seven siblings, three with the same mother and four with a different one. I have children and grandchildren. I've been blessed with a large family and friendships old enough to qualify for senior discounts.
And I'm finally beginning to understand something I should've learned years ago.
You don't have to manufacture life's magic. Most of the time, it's already happening; you just have to be quiet long enough to notice it.
If you don't mind me waxing philosophic, during this midterm election year, we need to force ourselves to slow down, keep our mouths closed and ears open, and recognize those important moments.
Our annual BUCA weekend fell apart this year; life got in the way, as life usually does. But three of us still made the drive to Wausau. Forty-five minutes there, forty-five minutes home, and a couple of hours around a table.
Not much, really.
Except that after more than 50 years, we still made the drive. Someday, sooner than any of us care to admit, one chair at that table will be empty. So while all five chairs are still available, I know I'll appreciate them quite a bit more.
Even if everybody sitting in those chairs is butt-ugly.
