Rat Tails and Hardee's Karaoke: The Comics of Little Bubby Child
A conversation with Eastern Kentucky's favorite mamaw-loving, next-generation cartoonist.
In the early days of the pandemic—when porch lights everywhere still hummed with a green glow and Kentuckians built their at-home schedules around a 4 p.m. press conference—Kenneth Pergram, the creator of Little Bubby Child, made one of the funniest things I’ve seen on the Internet.
This was a huge deal at the time, because pretty much nothing could make me break into a smile. I had a freshly-minted one-year-old underfoot with no childcare, an “essential worker” husband venturing out daily into a global health crisis and a stack of work so high I became very familiar with writing in the glow of a 2 a.m. infomercial for Copper Fit compression socks while everyone slept.
It was during one of these bleary-eyed, wee-small-hours that I stumbled across a one-panel comic featuring a Travis Tritt look-a-like with cascading blonde hair and a goatee who was mixing up a bathtub batch of bubbly yellow liquid. The comic read—My dad started bootleggin mountain dew the third day of crona virus—and, on Instagram, was further captioned: He said he still ain’t figured out the molar mass of the dew particles, but I wore a blindfold and couldn’t tell a differnce, so that pretty well settles it for me.
I laughed until I cried. I drink a lot of Diet Mountain Dew (which I’ve written about before) and a similar thought —could I learn to, uh, *make* DMD if supplies ran low?—had crossed my mind a time or two in more delirious moments of March 2020.
That first Little Bubby Child cartoon I stumbled upon did what all the best community art does: it made me feel seen. And if the ever-mushrooming number of Instagram (pushing 72K) and Facebook (topping 32K) followers of Pergram’s comic says anything at all, it’s that he’s helping other people across Central and Eastern Kentucky feel seen, too.
The titular “Little Bubby Child” is Pergram’s younger brother Wade, a “10-year-old redhead kid with a braided rat tail and a couple of regional clogging championships under his belt,” as Pergram describes. Wade seems to be something of a character both on and off the page, so centering his distinctive one-liners and colorful observations as source material was an obvious choice for his older brother, who has been taken with drawing since he started doodling “on his own hands” as a kid.
An Eastern Kentucky Gen Zer, Pergram’s work speaks to a next-generation way of capturing the day-to-day humor of Eastern Kentucky through a (largely family-inspired) ensemble cast that forms a Venn Diagram of oddly relatable, sentimental and downright hilarious personalities. Little Bubby Child is both evocative and familiar—the drawings like a crazy quilt of overheard conversations between two blue-haired church ladies and family reunion musing from a cousin once removed. His work shows that the beauty of people and community frequently lies in the mundanity of present: that the hum-drum moments are what can birth connection, creativity and an appreciation for the bizarro almost above all else.
The comics are perfectly meme-able and serve as across-the-board crowd-pleasers for locals, to be sure, but it’s also easy to see how Little Bubby is making an impact outside the region, showing off the intimate quirks and scrappy idiosyncrasies of Eastern Kentucky for an Internet crowd who might’ve never approached the region in such a light. (Or thought about it at all.) When you see a comic of a rat-tailed boy hoisting an opossum into the air and lovingly staring into its eyes while wearing a cowboy hat and polarized wrap-around sunglasses, you instinctively want to know more.
Below is an interview with Pergram about everything from dynamite sticks and diesel trucks, to the “Tina Turner of pizza slices” and recent Bubby Child TikTok challenge. And, bonus! We have a lightning round of “likes and dislikes” with the Little Bubby Child himself, ten-year-old Wade. (Spoiler alert: there’s lots of Shrek involved.)
When did you start drawing?
KP: To be honest, I have been drawing as long as I can remember. I think it probably started just me drawing on my own hands and stuff as a kid. Whenever I would get bored at school I would always draw.
When I was a little kid I remember doin’ a lot of corporate mascots, like the Hamburger Helper glove, the Slush Puppy dog—stuff like that. Also, at that age my thing was puttin’ legs on things. I would put legs on stuff that didn’t have no legs: like legs on a snake, legs on a pistol. I remember my first character was a slice of pizza with legs and a goatee…looking back at him he kind of looks like a prison inmate, but he’s got these really muscular legs. Kind of like the Tina Turner of pizza slices, if you will.
How does Eastern Kentucky inspire your humor?
KP: I mean, I think the mountains inspire my humor because it’s my life experience—it's really what I draw from most. I love the personality of it—the edge it has. I see little moments and things in my life that can spark ideas. I think the best comedy is in the mundane stuff that's all around us. It's the conversation you can't get out of at the bank, or the weird custom paint job on the back of some diesel truck. Life everywhere is inspiration.
But I tell ya—and you didn't ask me this necessarily—but one of the things I'm discovering is that our culture goes way beyond the bounds of Kentucky. I get people writing me from North Carolina, West Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama and so on telling me that they're certain I must be from their state. That's been really cool to watch because I love to discover those little connections.
When did the lightbulb go off to start Little Bubby Child in its current form?
KP: Really, I don’t think there was any big moment. The truth is I had been doing this stuff long before I created the Little Bubby page. So, it didn’t all come to me in a flash really. I think the only lightbulb moment was that I needed to do it consistently, and in a way that everyone can find it in one place, so that’s why I started the page.
As far as Bub his-self, that’s just my brother Wade. Character-wise, he don’t need a lot of creative embellishment. He’s a 10-year-old redhead kid with a braided rat tail and a couple of regional clogging championships under his belt, so all I really have to do is listen to him for a few minutes and you’ll get four or five Bubby cartoons out of it.
Why do you think Bubby resonates so much with people?
KP: I can only go off of what people tell me. Some people tell me that it resonates with them because they know people just like the ones in the comic...or they tell me they can relate to the characters and the little turns of phrase. People seem to get a kick out of reading them out loud, too. This month there was a Bubby TikTok challenge where people got on and read Bubby comics in their best voice. I couldn't believe it, because it somehow started on its own, but I've had a ball getting on TikTok and seeing what people do.
Do you have a favorite “character”?
KP: That’s a good question. I think I love all the characters. It's whatever I'm feelin’ at the moment. I have a lot of fun with Papaw Zennith Pergram: he's kind of a rowdy filterless old man who barks out a lot of angry but comical rebukes. I have one of him with a chaw of backer in his mouth and it just says, “If God didn't want us to eat meat, he wouldn't have give us dynamite to fish with.”
We have others like Mamaw Eula Pergram, who's kind of a sweet old granny but also down to party. She's very color coordinated with her bedazzled western blazers. There's one we did of her that just says, "When my mamaw drinks, she interpretive dances to Travis Tritts.”
If you could tell people one thing about Eastern Kentucky, you would tell them…
KP: This is funny to say, but I don’t think I would tell them nothin’. I think so many artists and musicians are starting to come out of the region who are celebrating what we have. People are starting to feel that energy. It’s all about sharing our gift, and I think there’s a desire for it in the wider world.
And now, let’s turn the mic over to the Little Bubby Child himself, 10-year-old Wade, for some insights into a few of his likes and dislikes:
If you could vacation anywhere in the world, where would it be?
Wade Pergram: I’ve always wanted to go to Sturgis Bike Week. I also want to go visit Lord Farquaad's Castle.
What’s your least favorite animal?
WP: I don’t like cats that get up on top of things. How they get up on the top shelf or on the kitchen counter. I don’t like nothin’ that tries to see over top a me.
Favorite soda and chips combination?
WP: Andy Capp’s hot fries and a bottle of Jolt coler.
How do you feel about cowboy boots?
WP: I seen a feller one time that had snake heads coming out of the end of his boots. To me, I thought, “Law, that’s the awfullest mess ever was.”
Secret to happiness?
WP: Just listen to the Shrak soundtrack. It’s all in there.
Favorite daytime TV show?
WP: Judge Judith. I got a T-shirt with her on there and it says, “Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s rainin’.”
Thanks to the Little Bubby Child family for chatting with me! If you haven’t already been in a mad dash to do it, follow them (and maybe even buy a mug with Mamaw Eula on it?) to keep up with Eastern Kentucky’s most Golden Corral and high lonesome sound-loving comic.
We’ll be back Tuesday here at The Goldenrod with our first news-focused story. In the meantime, click here to subscribe and get our emails in your inbox directly (cut out the website middleman!) or send this story along to a friend. We’ll be starting Friday editions in a couple of weeks, which are only available to paid subscribers (ahem) and introducing more behind-the-scenes content for stories, so stay tuned…