Bubba Galendar was the youngest of the troubled Galender trio who come to Walnut Grove.
Biography
Bubba attends the Walnut Grove school and bullies his schoolmates. After brutally knocking down a small girl on the playground, he is reprimanded by Mary Ingalls. He responds by punching her in the face, blackening her eye, thus beginning his reign of terror over his classmates (mostly female, as the male students are working their respective family farms at this time of year).
While Mary generally avoids Bubba, encouraging Laura to do the same, Nellie quickly befriends him, sharing candy from her father's store. Nellie's sycophantic attitude toward Bubba comes as no surprise to Laura and Mary.
After days of tolerating Bubba's bullying, Mary reaches her breaking point when Bubba tries to claim her writing tablet for himself. When Mary confronts him, vowing never to back down to him again, Bubba mocks Charles Ingalls, referencing the beating he received at the hands of Bubba's brothers George and Sam. Mary then hits him in the face with her lunch pail, knocking him down. Although staggered by Mary's initial attack, Bubba soon regains the upper hand and repels both Mary and Laura with relative ease, laughing at them the whole time. His triumph is cut short, however, as the remaining girls in his class (joined by Willie Oleson, the only other male student at the time) at once descend on him and begin beating him, finally putting an end to his bullying.
At home, Bubba does most of the chores; chopping wood, cooking. Bubba reveals to Reverend Alden that, contrary to the sad story told by George and Sam that their mother was seriously ill, his mother actually ran off with a drummer shortly after Bubba's birth, and was never heard from again.
Bubba did not remain in the town long after his humiliating beating at the hands of his classmates. That following Sunday, the Galender brothers were escorted out of Walnut Grove by the men of the community.