Spring mornings are a lot like Christmas. Each day we get up and go out into the yard or walk along the creek or visit the horses in the pasture. And each day, each morning, we find something new the sun has brought us.

  Pinfeather leaves of an unbelievable green now start showing on cottonwoods that have stood like stark ghostly frames all through the cold winter. Hopeful blades of grass peek through clumps of brown left over from last summer’s verdant pasture. Everywhere we look there is something new and different.

Continue reading “HOME COUNTRY: Spring mornings are a lot like Christmas.” →

When old Joe Gilliam began digging that hole in his front yard, out there close to the street, neighbors watched and wondered.  When he got his grandson to help him carry the shade tree sapling from his pickup to the hole, people nodded.

  Mystery solved. Old Joe’s planting a tree.

  After removing the root mass from the five-gallon pot, the grandson disappeared and Old Joe was left to care for the baby tree. He carefully spread the tiny feeder roots out and tucked them in with soil. Then he packed more dirt around the tree’s base and soaked it well with the hose.

  No one else saw anything odd in Joe planting that tree, either, but Joe’s been retired now going on 20 years. He’s old and getting more frail each year. By the time that sapling gets large enough to give homes to squirrels and birds and shade to neighbors and a resting place for dogs, Joe will have been long gone.

  Planting a tree is an affirmation of faith in the future. It is a gift to those yet unborn. It is a legacy of goodness, an old man’s prayer.

Brought to you by “Strange Tales of Alaska” by Slim Randles. Now available online.

We knew it was coming when Bert came into the Mule Barn truck stop the other day. He took his usual stool at the philosophy counter and world dilemma think tank, where he reigns as Cutting Edge Technology Advisor to the board of directors.

  It was that glint in his eye that gave it away.

  “Hi Bert.”

  “Hi Doc. Say, isn’t this a beautiful day? It’s 32 out there.”

  “Doesn’t seem that cold,” said Steve, our resident cowboy, who tends to look at everything from the back of a horse.

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 “Moon’s getting big,” Dud said over coffee the other day.

    “Sure is,” said Herb Collins.

    “Time to go after The Ghost  again.”

    “Tomorrow night?”

    “I’ll be there,” said Dud. 

    The Ghost, hereabouts, is a raccoon. He lives along Lewis Creek and is a wily old rascal. We love going coonhunting here, but the way we do it is a bit different than they do it other places. Since we don’t have a lot of water around us, as they do in some areas, we don’t have a lot of ‘coons, either. So we conserve the ‘coons, but not the fun. We throw ‘em back when we’re done.

    So we take these beautiful fall and winter nights, put on several layers of longjohns, and turn the hounds out along the creek. Sometimes the dogs strike a ‘coon track and put the ‘coon up the tree quickly. Then we tell the dogs how wonderful they are, hook the dogs to leashes, and drag them back to the truck. It’s hunting’s answer to catch-and-release fishing. The coons stay in the tree until we’re gone and then go back to making the nights more interesting.

  But not The Ghost. The Ghost is a big male, or boar. We’ve treed him more than a dozen times now, and then he discovered this was kinda fun. So now he waits in a one-acre patch of trees. Waits for the dogs. And when they catch his scent, he takes those dogs through farmyards, across busy streets, even past the dog pound. He does everything he can to shake them off his trail, and it works. The dogs haven’t treed him in three years now. It the dogs get smart to his ways and put too much pressure on him, he swims the river. 

  So Dud and Herb will try The Ghost again tomorrow. Will the dogs put him up a tree this time? Don’t bet on it.

                                                                ———–

Brought to you by Packing the Backyard Horse, by Slim Randles. Available on the internet.

 It was Doc’s idea, of course. That’s what made it sing. That’s why it took off in gales of laughter and fun.

  He knew we needed the money for the children in our area who might be without warm clothes this winter, so he brainstormed among himself and came up with the golf tournament.

  He went to Delbert McLain, who is our local chamber of commerce. Delbert’s eyes lit up at the suggestion, but then suddenly clouded over with doubt.

  “But Doc,” Delbert said, “we don’t have a golf course.”

  “Leave that to me, Delbert me lad. Leave that entirely to me.”

  And so our medical leprechaun talked to two farmers whose land adjoined each other, and after they quit laughing, they agreed.

  Doc rounded up Dud and Herb Collins and laid out an 18-hole golf course in about an hour. They used steel t-posts for flags (with bandanas tied to the top) and dug a hole with a shovel. They put smaller flags at the tee-off spots, and there you go! An 18-hole golf course that was one hundred percent hazard.

  No fairway, just hazard. Rocks and trees and Lewis Creek and the occasional cactus and yucca. Doc figures if you make it around all 18 holes without encountering a poisonous snake, you should get bonus points.

   “This course,” said Doc, “is so bad, everyone will want to play, because everyone will have a terrific excuse for having a terrible game.”

   The cattle were moved to safer locations before the tournament began, and enough money was raised to keep the kids warm this winter.

   “Life,” said Doc, “should be ridiculous and fun. So let’s do this again next fall.”

                                                    ———–

Brought to you by Saddle Up, A Cowboy Guide to Writing by Slim Randles. On the internet and from Rio Grande Publishing in Albuquerque.

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  I don’t mind Boots. He just curls up quietly against my belly and stays put. But sleeping with Desdemona can be a bit unnerving. She snores. Sometimes she gets little bad dreams and scratches me, too. But hey, I get to come in out of the cold and sleep with Aunt Ada’s cats on her sofa, and a guy can tolerate a certain amount of cat snoring for that.

  I was glad when I heard Aunt Ada puttering in the kitchen because I knew it was time to get up. After she let me out, she fed me, and let me tell you … that kibble was just as good this morning as it was yesterday. And then she petted me, called me her dear Billy, and let me out to do my rounds.

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Don’t look at me … Steve started it. Oh yes, it’s still us, the supreme court of coffee and anything ridiculous. And yes, we’re ensconced once again within the hallowed halls of the Mule Barn coffee shop. Just about like every morning. But today, Steve, our beloved ranch cowboy and fine-feathered farrier, broke into song to bring back memories of high remote camps, log-sitting around fires, and trips to town and whatever girls we might scare up.

  From his end of the counter, Steve began, “Oh, you don’t know what lonesome is, ‘til you start herdin’  co-o-o-o-o-ws!”

    And there has to be at least five o’s in cows or it doesn’t count. Yep, that lack of attention to detail would automatically brand this as coming from someone on the radio, but with a long-drawn out cows ….. most of us knew the source. Not Doc and Herb, as they didn’t share the same history of bunkhouse life the rest of us shared some 40 years back.

   The rest of were laughing so hard at the memories that we couldn’t swallow coffee. Windy spilled his all over the sugar packets.

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  It just happened, you know? One of those serendipitous coincidences that occur when planets line up or you foolishly store oily rags together. It just … happened.

  Ardis Richardson was looking through the Soup ‘R Market for an egg beater for her mom. Not the electric kind. The turn-the-handle kind. She picked one up and tried it out, causing the friendly little metallic whir that good egg beaters make. What was serendipitous, however, was Anita Campbell not six feet away in the next row thumping pumpkins. As Anita thumped and Ardis whirred, they got in time with each other and Sarah McKinley was checking out kitchen timers and gave one a friendly ding. This got the thumper and whirrer going even more enthusiastically and caused the market’s owner, Annette George, to walk over to the three percussionists, grin, and pick up a brand-new stainless steel funnel, purse her lips, and begin to blow a blues tune on it. It was okay, since she owned the store.

  Annette, it turns out, played trombone back in high school.

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One of the problems Marvin Pincus discovered about running the Fly Tying Love Center here in the valley is that there appeared to be more fly tying than love counseling going on.

This particular morning he was whipping up a nice fluffy Adams dry on a number 12 and wishing everyone’s love problems were as easy to solve as tying one of these. He realized he’s a pioneer in the field of combining fly tying and romance solutions, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t quietly hope for his neighbors to have more love problems. His advice had worked well with Dewey (a lead-wire-wrapped wooly bugger leading to the suggestion he showers before he asks a girl out on a date), and with Randy Jones (a pheasant-tail nymph and a Parmachene Belle sending him on his way to girlfriend happiness with Katie Burchell). But there were others out there. There had to be others.

  Other advice counselors, the ones who just sat there taking notes, managed to find any number of unhappy potential love victims, but the Fly Tying Love Center was noticeably short of them at the moment.

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