COWBOY'S
LOG
What Goes Around
Musings on bad career counseling and
good years for politicians.
Ever’
so often we say it: this
page is where we corral some
of our stray notions and maverick opinions—anything that
doesn’t have a home elsewhere
in the wider confines
of this magazine. It’s where
we trot out other folks’ sentiments
that we found worth repeating,
and parade some wisdom of our own concocting.
If
you find these notes sensible, useful, or agreeable,
we’re happy to take
full credit. If you don’t, we’re confident
it’s all easy enough to ignore.
Neighbor,
we’ve rounded up some hefty stock for you this time around.
For our
photography pictorial, it’s the work of
renowned cowboy photographer Kurt
Markus. For rodeo coverage, it’s the inside
scoop on the National Finals. For
travel, it’s our explorations of the Four Corners
area and the mighty King Ranch. For
music, it’s the finest young traditionalist,
Brad Paisley, to come along in years.
For
chuck, it’s pure premium cuts—Grady’s
gone and served up his choicest steak
recipes. And so on through the rest of the
lineup. So bite down and take lockjaw.
And get ready for our Anniversary issue,
coming up next, when we do our darnedest
to outdo even these doings.
Sometime
in January, Paul Harvey remarked during his midday News
and
Comment about a new wind farm being
developed somewhere. Didn’t hear where,
but this editor can tell you where they
ought to put a wind farm. Chugwater,
Wyoming. Chugwater, home of
Chugwater Chili, lies alongside Interstate
25 about 45 miles north of Cheyenne.
Cheyenne is itself supposed to be the
windiest city in the United States, topping
even Chicago. But if personal experience
counts for anything, I say Chugwater
takes the top spot. There’s a point a few
miles north of Chugwater where a windsock
tops a sign that says “Caution: high
winds,” or something to that effect.
Once,
when I came upon that sign and saw the
sock stretched straight out—nothing
unusual about that—I looked across the
median to the approaching lanes, and there
saw a semi tractor-trailer lying flat on its
side. At the exit for Chugwater is a little
gas station and store. Many’s the time I’ve
pumped gas there and trudged through
the gale to pay. I’ve chased my hat across
their parking lot more times than I want
to remember. It’s a shameful thing for
someone to have their cowboy hat blow
off. And the chasing only adds indignity
to the matter.
Once
I pulled up to the gas pump there and opened my door
and it
cupped the wind and whoosh!… the door
whipped outward to its full extension,
hard, making a sickening pop. Hoping to
avoid a sprung hinge, I had lunged at it,
and as I did, my straw quit my head as
though it were shot from it, sailing about
a hundred feet before its first bounce. Off
I bolted in pursuit, in a wild, wind-aided
sprint. I sailed along faster than I would
normally dream—or dare—of going.
Still,
papers from off my dashboard passed me.
Sure, you could make a million bucks
farming wind in Chugwater, but what with
all the shouting to be heard and all the
leaning into the fury, you’d be forever
hoarse and bent. If you take it up, tell us
how you fared. That is, if you don’t go
loco first.
It’s hard to put into words the tremendous
influence that television westerns
had over the American public in the timeframe
of, say, 1958-1963. Perhaps only
Baby Boomers (or older) can fully relate
to this, but westerns owned television.
As Jim Mueller’s story on “Blasters of the
Past” (pp. 58-61) indicates, about one of
every three prime time series was a western.
But even that kind of saturation,
incredible as it was, doesn’t tell the whole
story.
Saturday
mornings were peppered with shoot-’em-ups, “matinee”
movies
kept the horse operas churning, and
other daytime programming included a
thundering herd of oaters. It was impossible
for regular television viewers not to have steady exposure
to, if not a regular
diet of, westerns.
Not
only is America unlikely ever to see westerns regain
such
a hold on the collective consciousness,
it is unlikely that any other genre will
come close to matching it. It remains the
only real Golden Age that any genre has
ever enjoyed on television.
Writer Lin Sutherland, who contributed
our feature on the Four Corners region,
told us that she’d heard Garrison Keillor,
on his Prairie Home Companionradio show,
doing a skit about two old cowboys, Slim
and Dusty.
This
gal showed up at their campfire and asked Slim (Keillor)
what
led him to become a cowboy. After a pause
for consideration, he answered, ‘Bad
career counseling.’”
A few miscellaneous bits from the 2001
Bumfuzzled Too calendar: “A cowboy’s
endurance is like a tube of toothpaste…
there’s always a little left. / If all is not
lost, where is it? / You’ll never get a diploma
from the School of Hard Knocks, but you’ll
sure remember its lessons. / Ya got to
have some clouds to have a beautiful sunset.
/ You can shear ’em forever, but ya
can only skin ’em once. / Selling some
of your top brood cows is like watching
your mother-in-law drive over a cliff in
your new Cadillac.”
For
more information on Lewis Bowmans Bumfuzzled Too
book and calendar (sequels to his
Bumfuzzled offerings of a few years ago)
log onto cowboy.com. Or log on just to
see the variety of other information and
links we’ve posted there, on the site
known as “The Western Connection.”
Leave it to Will Rogers to have seen the
good side of losing a political election:
“Both parties have their good and bad
times at different times. Good when they
are out. Bad when they are in.”
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