Greenhorn Cleans Animal Waste

Part 16 of 30

The Mam & Pap

Royal Splendid Traveling Rodeo

Here's one of those stories everyone likes so much, the classic coming of age story, with the guy in transition from naivete to maturity. You see a explosion of experience into wisdom, making one who possibly didn’t know his anal region from a hole in the ground suddenly able to put 2+2 together and make elementary distinctions.

Some might say it’s “Just Another Greenhorn story” — similar to hunting snipe but different in the sense that he’s doing real work, trying to make a difference. The rodeo has some work that take humility to really get in there and do it. You seek encouragement but so often it's a thankless job.

One of those jobs is mucking out stalls, that little sliver of land where an animal stands. Natural processes take over and they need tended to. A greenhorn looking to get his feet wet usually gets tabbed to get in there and be a difference-maker. And he’s encouraged occasionally but often it’s a stage in his tenure more or less transitional — today the stalls, tomorrow the main staging area! Potentially the world. If he hasn’t left the rodeo field and perhaps gone into a less honorable profession, medicine or banking.

It’s being a greenhorn that, even if the rewards aren’t immediate, they eventually come. You could get a good referral: “Jed was an excellent mucker-out of stalls, clean as a whistle.” But along the way, often — and it’s all in good fun — he might get pleasantly razzed. Because as we all know, most guys stumble-bumble in their earliest jobs. Maybe they came from a family where Dad was a banker and that was it. Privilege.

But one day he sees a sign about the rodeo, "Help Wanted," and he's soon up to his boots in it. The other guys look and see he’s got a pile mounded up pretty tall and it’s ripe. He calls to the men asking what he should do with the waste.

“Well,” one chiseled old cowpoke lazily drawls, very lazily, before spitting out the juice of a plug of tobacco the size of Texas, “If’n it ‘twere me, I’d cart it somewheres really good, east of the sun and west of the moon.” He cackles with laughter, then chokes on tobacco juice and hacks till he nearly strokes out. The others have heard the joke before yet still resonate with it, high-fiving each other.

There is then the greenhorn, repeating the east-west coordinates as outlined. He wonders where that could be. “The sun comes up in the east, but west of the moon could be anywhere. And by the time I got it either east OR west, both sun and moon will have moved and it’ll be all wrong."

Not to belabor it forever, the greenhorn carts those piles here and there, bringing in new piles, making the carting-about of it an intricate and ever-changing dance, until — I hate to say it — he was discouraged. The other rodeo helpers came and gave him the full scoop: “Over there’s the muck wagon. Put it there and the foreman will have someone pull it to the edge of town and shovel it in the ditch.

And it worked out exactly like that, a fitting place for it — a place occasionally east of the sun and west of the moon — with the greenhorn maturing and becoming a decent laborer. He earns his keep in a responsible way, like the horses and bulls themselves.

Pleasant Romp With Killer Bull

 

Part 14 of 30

The Mam & Pap

Royal Splendid Traveling Rodeo

Picture yourself in those taut moments — filled with agony, ecstasy, and expectation, “I might die in the next minute. Forgive me for the sins of my youth, which everyone does." Get securely prone and a’straddle as best you can a bull whose back is six times your senior.

The seconds tick down before the gate springs and your thoughts are a mile a minute. “I had genuine sweaty-armpits fear of this animal when I first saw him, and it’s not much better now.” You mentally juggle fear and resolve, counting the seconds till you either get up alive or they whisk your lifeless body out of the area so as to not bring everyone down.

There’s an uneasy truce, at least in your mind, because it’s tough to negotiate with a proud bull from your somewhat-dominant edge of sitting on its back. If you could sum it up, it’d be, “I’ll go easy on you, Old Bull, because each one of us is the other’s bread and butter, so to speak.” Then you try the commiseration approach: “Someday we’ll be retired together, me in a room, you in a stall, each of our quarters adjacent and opening up to a playground for us to mosey lazily around, remembering the ‘Shows of ‘98’ and all the good old days. Remember our first time together, your loco wildness and my abject terror barely concealed?”

That thought is barely filed away before the door springs open and the bull bucks and kicks like he means business, dirty business. Which he has to because no one bucks like his life depends on it just for the hell of it. Then there’s the eyes, that intent glare of death. If it weren’t for the snarl of rope around his muzzle, he’d take a bite outta everything in sight. Firearms might make an unwelcome appearance, it being always necessary to maintain life and limb of the human performers and their watchers. Especially the crowd, because they can sue.

Right now, though, the crowd is into it, their thirst for blood barely concealed. They’re so into it that they loosen the purse strings of their collective humanity and are just hoping to see some action, riproaring stuff maybe involving the bull goring the man, taking out the clowns, who knows what all is possible? Destroying the county? “Just so these bleachers are able to protect me till I’m able to escape the grounds!”

Eight seconds of glory have passed and the rider waves his arm, “I’m OK, thank you for your thoughts and prayers...” The clowns roll a few bald tires around the lot, lulling the bull back to docility, which is how bulls naturally behave with mixed signals and scattered focus. Like la la land.

Babyface, Rookie Greenhorn

 

Part 11 of 30

The Mam & Pap

Royal Splendid Traveling Rodeo

There was a guy who was a real greenhorn, if that word means what I think it means. A guy green around the gills, looking forever innocent, perpetually driven but more or less incompetent, perhaps also lacking aptitude, even basic sense, taken in with the rodeo and joining it, yet still doing some good along the way.

Like I say, this guy wasn't a quality star, or even one of the lesser lights in the universe, and you might say he was even less than a fizzling firecracker — not at all like the brightest star in Earth’s darkest night — but he still had a purpose. His purpose was to inspire others to be yearn to be rodeo stars, holding on to the very good chance that they would exceed him in ability. I still call him the Rookie Cowboy, never maturing to be any good, just forever maintaining his place, his purpose, and his surprisingly good looks.

“Hey, Babyface!” they’d call out to him after a painful spill. He’d grimace, get a snarl on his face, and seem to be cussing under his breath, hoping the pain would go away, and that they'd see only the smile on his face. Someone might say, “Oh, nursing some wounds, huh? Got bucked off again? Landed on your head? Be careful, you don’t want to lose your looks!” After a bit he’d brush it off and climb back on the animal again, so he had optimism.

Mam and Pap’s rodeo got a lot of good talent over the years inspired by the Rookie Cowboy's troubles, those who’d just turned 18 (let’s say for the sake of argument) and others who might’ve actually been 18 or over. With a hunger for the life of travel, the smell of animals digesting in the morning, afternoon, and evening, and heart-stopping competition, the kind of romantic daydreaming you read about in the cheaper rodeo magazines.

Pap told him, “Babyface, everyone starts out somewhere and everyone ends up the same place, on their ass. See those impressionable young guys in the stands? Most of them have just one purpose in life. Their path has led them to the rodeo, a life they’ll love like you.” And indeed it was so, the life of the rodeo, one of life’s choices that once you’re on the road you come to tolerate more or less as an OK thing. You get to see a lot of one-horse towns, and tent living’s not bad if it’s not raining and there’s not the slightest breeze. And as long as someone pays you, you tolerate it like any other job.

So Babyface was in the rodeo! Good for him. Even though he never made the record books, and we’re even considering the fact that rodeo record books are easily forged. But he did set a record of sorts for enticing a generation of young cowpokes to excel at clowning, ride the bucking broncs, bulls and other animals, and of course maintenance. If you run into him, ask him for a bubblegum cigar. He once did a lot of good with that friendly gesture, impressing younger fans everywhere he went.

Bull vs. Bad Egg Magistrate

Part 18 of 30 -- Speaking Ill of The Dead

The other case of a guy chased downhill by a bull was this guy, Thornton the Magistrate. Which could’ve been prevented. Let’s think of how:

You’re the only magistrate a county's had in 50 years and you still haven’t got a basic sense of the territory? You only know the town? Well, the country comes stocked with bulls everywhere, guarding their cows and from time to time mating with them. The fact that they’re mating with them means they’re sensitive to any posed threat. Yes, maybe the magistrate had no designs on the cows. He's never been known to be a swinger.

But the bull knows what he smells. If dogs can smell fear, bulls are equally good judges on horniness. Don't forget, they're bulls, with nut-sacks the size of parachutes. They live and breathe gonads. They get their daily news sniffing the air. You should never take a date to the country. Bulls out there are, constantly sniffing, and might tap your shoulder to step in like a guy at a dance. Or just take a big swipe at your head.

Then, the idiot magistrate goes to the country in a red suit? Which part of bullfighting did he miss growing up? When they came to the part where the guy holds up a red flag just before being attacked and having to kill the bull, was he shaking a pan of popcorn in the kitchen? Then he gets back to the TV, the rodeo still on, and asks the family what he missed? Of course they’re not going to tell him the embarrassing details, a bull and a red-nosed clown are about to have a baby. If he wanted to see the mounting suspense he should’ve stayed!

I guess those are my main judgments against Thornton. Except just to throw in, the guy was a bad egg anyway and this likely was merely his day for divine justice. With the servant of the Lord in this case being a mindless bull, possibly even a blind bull, and maybe neutered at that, that didn’t care anything about the red suit and wasn't the slightest bit jealous about the cows. Just divinely led to wipe out any and all magistrates, be they corrupt, conceited, or new to the job and harmless. But, really, would anyone wear a suit and hat like that if he weren't conceited? Should've toned it down, dead man.

But I’m fairly sure the magistrate was out there to enforce some unfair judgment against an innocent citizen. Boo, hiss! That's why you don't see any citizens. They're hidden away somewhere in the cellar or attic. And playing their hand pretty well, in my opinion, making the magistrate circle the barn a few times, calling out their name, and flashing his red suit. Perfect for the bull to get him! Which just coincidentally happened to out of his locked pen!

OK, Thornton the magistrate, RIP. I'm sure his death was a loss to the widow, but magistrates are well-paid and diligent. You really have to claw your way up to be magistrate. So he had good money and good life insurance. And the widow will be better off, maybe even with a million dollars! The old man couldn’t outrun a bull? Ha ha, his loss, everyone else's gain!

Nature's Most Perfect Food - 2014

In previous years, I have summarily pronounced Tabasco as "Nature's Most Perfect Food." This year, with the possibility of shaking things up, I'm putting it in a head to head competition with a couple other great contenders. We'll see how it fares.

According to Wikipedia, "Food is that stuff we eat." If that's true, and I believe it is, we have to reason that some of it's likely to be better. That's what we're wanting nail down today, not only which is better but so good it deserves the sterling appellation of "Nature's Most Perfect Food -- 2014."

This year, I have three finalists, which I will list in alphabetical order, double-checked for complete impartiality: Bacon, Milk, and Tabasco. The competition will be fair, but I must insist, my decision will be final, certainly through the rest of the year, and until such time, if ever, that my taste buds and/or the inscrutable criterion "Extreme Unction" change.

Milk is a weird one, the beverage of mammals, produced right straight from bodies of the female variety. I'm given to understand that milk was my first meal, and was what I subsisted on through much of my first couple years. That's awesome to me, that I was so stuck on one thing. All I wanted was more milk, apparently. I still love it.

Bacon is a food we hear a lot about these days. At the current time, there seems to be a huge bacon kick with the public. Of our three foods, bacon is the one that fluctuates the most wildly in price. Cows regularly put out milk and it goes to market, but hog farmers know they've got food-gold, like oil, so the prices are always up and down. And Tabasco is regular as rain -- regular as rain used to be, before global warming. We'll just say now it's regular as Antarctic ice calving.

I want to underscore one other thing about bacon, that my love for it has nothing to do with jumping on today's wild bacon bandwagon; I've always had it. I love opening a pack of bacon. It's in there like the pages of a book, and you know it's going to be a taste adventure. Plus, hogs have always been a personal favorite.

I've known lots of people who raised hogs, and they depended on people like me for their income. I've seen freshly slaughtered hogs, not a good sight. I've heard hogs being castrated, not a good sound. But I figure any animal that's willing to go through all that, I'm not going to turn away their meat. One of the weirdest hog sights I've ever seen was something like 1,000 baby pigs all together in one room. Just a writhing, seething, heaving, disgusting mass of pig. I remember saying, "Get me the hell out of here!"

Milk and bacon, coming from animals, don't sound immediately desirable. But I focus on the finished product, a big glass of cold milk and a plate of nicely cooked bacon. Milk poured well before its spoil date, and bacon not fried to death, but not undercooked. So chewy, so flavorful, so nutritious, so much enjoyable fat that you can't help loving it. Washed down with cold milk. I always loved getting the little milk cartons in school. They only gave us white back in those days, unlike the current more-pampered generation. 

Then there's my old friend Tabasco. I've made it well known over the years, in real life and on this blog, that I love Tabasco. I've slathered so much Tabasco on things over the years, they really should make me an honorary citizen of Avery Island, my own little cottage, etc. Once I sneezed and had Tabasco way up my sinuses, nearly burning out my system. At the time I thought I would die, but I lived to laugh about it later.

These days, though, I've had a harder time with Tabasco. So I'm using less. I seem to be getting more sensitive to it as my aging molecules wither and die. With my mind I love it the same, but my molecules counsel restraint. I don't know what to do. I've always bulldozed ahead with my mind, but it's foolish to cross molecules. If they say they're tearing, straining, and dying, I need to listen, don't I? Or I could simply deny that bad things can happen, like with global warming, and press on full speed ahead. Who's ever heard of negative consequences from anything?

The way I'll decide the contest this year is according to the principle of Extreme Unction. Which of the three foods puts the most (and best) unction in my extremities? Right away, it's a contest. Milk, being my earliest (and only) food, obviously kept my extremities nice and rosy. It had no competition and did it alone. But having no competition also suggests an unfair advantage. As far as serving up unction today, yes, I will say milk still does. However, the old advantage is gone. Milk supplements, it's not the main thing.

Bacon has tons of unction. And my extremities find it satisfying in virtually every way. The one downside of bacon is that it often overloads my system with guilt. I'm always worrying, Have I cooked too much? Will I get fatter than I want? Should I eat it every meal? Is it bad for me? Still, just thinking of bacon there on the paper towel, the grease being quickly wicked away, leaving those lean strips in a seductive spread eagle pose, I'm always pleased and, even now, feel a tingling in my extremities.

Tabasco also carries a lot of unction, up the ying yang unction. Tabasco even makes me feel proud. I know Grandpa would love to see his boy eating a ton of Tabasco. He used to put it on my plate, a drop, and laugh himself to tears watching me trying to get it past my teeth. Then, after his passing, somehow his tolerance of it was transferred to me. So I'm no longer the boy but the man! Like Leonardo's man, my extremities are totally stretched out, and Tabasco hits them all, a bulls-eye every time. But Tabasco, fantastic as it is, is like milk in this one way, supplementary. Yes, occasionally I put it on a plate and lick it up, but not very often anymore. Because of age, the molecules, etc.

All three of the great foods have amazing unction, and each one's unction touches the extremities in ways hard to believe, or they wouldn't even be in the running. I tip my hat to all three. But the one food this year that puts the most Extreme Unction in my extremities, and therefore will hold the title forever of "Nature's Most Perfect Food -- 2014" is going to be  .... Bacon!

Boar Balls -- The New Family Fun Game

Here's a game I came up with because I had to come up with something! And you know what? It turned out to be a real hit! All the kids, my nieces and nephews, have been to the State Fair -- it's a family tradition -- so they know all about the horrendously large balls on the "Biggest Boar."

Every year farmers compete to bring in the biggest boar. They must feed them like crazy through the year, because they're the biggest things you've ever seen. They're so big, in fact, that you never see them stand up. Whether they could stand up, I suppose they could. But it's always so hot, it looks like they prefer to just lie there, their balls hanging out, exposed to a terrible swarm of flies. The two biggest boars are one of the main attractions at the fair.

Now, about the game. It came about because of a little serendipity. By that I mean, I have very sweaty feet, the weirdest, sweatiest feet you've ever seen. It happens like this: My feet feel like they're ice cold, while all this time they're sweating, making them even icier and colder. Consequently, if you see me walking around, I always have like three or four pair of fresh socks in my pockets. My pockets bulge out like a hamster's cheeks. It's quite a sight to see.

OK, next, it just so happened I was at the home of my nieces and nephews, and their kids, since some of them are getting older. This was at a birthday celebration for one of them. And some of them were looking curiously at my jacket, all bulging out, like maybe I was growing love handles. I was too embarrassed to tell them about my foot problems. So I thought quick and pulled out the socks so they could see it was all quite harmless. I said it was a game! But what?

Well, as these things go, one thing led to another. And next thing you knew, I had invented the game of Boar Balls. Which goes something like this: You have two teams. Each team has an IT. It is the teams' task, starting off about 12 feet away from the other team's IT, to ask questions of the other team. With a right answer, team 1 stays in place. With a wrong answer, team 1 advances one foot toward team 2's IT. Then, of course, the first team to get their IT smacked in the face with Boar Balls loses.

We've found you can make it a lot funner the grosser you are. Such as "Those are really sweaty ones coming!" Or "The flies are everywhere, swarming around!" And "How funky, very funky, those balls are!" You can picture how it goes: IT doesn't want to be smacked, because they're busy picturing in their mind an actual boar backing toward them. Which, if that really happened, it would be very gross and painful.

The day I made up the game I just happened to have 500 questions on small cards relating to true facts about hogs. Such as, "True or False, the boar is a male." I know, that sounds really easy, but some of these kids, with our educational system today, and their addiction to video games, don't really know what male and female even mean. Then there's questions that kids simply don't know because they're more agricultural whereas the kids are urban. Such as, "With the hog, it's a well-known expression that they're able to use everything but the __BLANK__." None of the kids knew this, again, probably a result of their addiction to video games and their lack of exposure to this fact. The answer is "The squeal." I also wrote in some gimmes, such as, "True or False, a groundhog is the same as a farm hog." That's false. The groundhog is different from a farm hog, the main difference its much smaller balls.

Since it's "The New Family Fun Game," naturally I'm sensitive that all families are not alike. There are some -- I'm thinking of our Jewish and Muslim friends -- who won't have anything to do with pork. For them, I recommend the same game, while calling it "Bull Balls." I've also written 500 questions on the big beefers.

My own family being at least nominally Christian, and not having any sensitivity about Boars vs. Beef -- frankly, we eat both, often together -- stick to the Boar version. Unless, and this is important, unless we've already memorized the Boar answers and need some variety, at which point we switch to the Bull questions.

No matter how you play it, it's both dreadful and yet kind of fun to picture that massive animal backing your direction, if you're IT, and having those huge balls smacking you solid in the face. As for me, even though I'm the guy that came up with the game, my imagination's working overtime and I don't want those huge balls in my face either! Crazy but true.

Why The Cow Goes Moo

The cow didn't always say moo. And there's no reason to suppose it did, even if the way it worked out would seem to indicate the way it started. We tend to think nothing makes progress in time. So when God created the cow it came down a shute and the first thing it said was moo.

No, no. And once again, dear friends -- don't be skeptical -- I have traversed the corridors of whatever, most of the time swimming upstream, to reference the Akashic Records. It's not that hard to do, however it is very frustrating because the other quacks who came before me got them very messed up and out of order.

But if you're looking for particular files, things that the average clairvoyant doesn't care very much about, such as on the evolving vocabulary of cattle, they're not too messed up. Most people of course are more interested in the words and travels of Jesus, how Buddha came to be fat and skinny at the same time, and why George Washington cut down the cherry tree. They've pretty much left questions on the various animal vocabularies, and the more subtle things of animal dialects, alone.

Speaking of myself, I'm interested in all these things. One, because I really respect cattle for coming up with something so simple and catchy, and not that far off the mark, as should be clear to anyone, from the Primal/Original Mind sound of OM. It's just flipped around, hinting first at dyslexia, or more purposefully at humor, or perhaps it's merely the same exact thing, only as seen from a consciousness apparently different in typical expression from our own. I frankly don't see a downside to saying MOO, being convinced that it doesn't make a bit of difference.

Anyway, getting back to the Akashic Records. Here's what I have to say about the Records. They're better than nothing. If it weren't for the Records, I'd simply have to make this up, about the cow. And if I did that, perhaps folks wouldn't see in it the same authority. Which isn't to say the original Akashic author didn't simply make it up, but since He and She is a lot more mysterious, we're willing to buy it.

So, please, if you're in that camp, just let me just transcribe the damned thing and be done with it. Here's some of the other vocabulary the platonic perfect cow and its immediate descendants toyed with:

Pistoloops, mamasita, hotsprings, ruff-ruff, lipschitz, palmolive, google, repubpuke, [multiple retching noises based on repubpuke], quaffone, skipbo, passgo, obladi-oblada, poopshute, sadchidananda, chuckbook, checksum, kindlebook, goku, kubball, oompaloompa, cockadoodledo, smorgabord, frootloops, sexawowsa, and vavavoom.

How it was narrowed down to moo is an amazing story in itself. They saw a baby cow walking through the pasture who kept saying MOO. They started making fun of it, then they made fun of it so much, continually, that it finally stuck. It's the old line about "First, they laugh at you..." come to life!