I Was Destined To Be A Texas Cowboy

In October 1955, my parents took my 11 month old baby brother Chet and I to our Uncle Skinny and Aunt Gladys's house that was about 10 miles west of a little town in the panhandle of Texas by the name of Claude (where the movie Hud staring Paul Newman was filmed.)  My uncle lived on a little ranch where he raised a few cows and did some farming.  When the car pulled up to the house it resembled a scene from the television series The Walton's.  My dad's two younger sisters and their families were also there and my best guess is there were no less than 14 little booger pickin' kids running all over God's creation in various stages of dirt, sweat and chewing Bazooka bubble gum.  Once all the hand shaking, hugging and kissing was over, I walked with the big boy's to the barn where everybody grabbed an empty feed bucket and turned it over and sat down....cowboy style.

Since I was only 5-years old, I wasn't allowed to smoke snipes, which was nothing more than crushed cigarette butts from the ash trays of our parents cars.  The two older cousins, Jimmy and Jerry, asked me between puffs if I wanted to become a real cowboy.  Do I? Of course I want to be a cowboy!  I had all the qualifications necessary for this position.  Every Saturday morning I was glued to the television set watching the Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Hop Along Cassidy, Gene Autry, Sky King and the Cisco Kid. Why, I even had an official Range Riders cowboy hat and badge.  Of course I'm ready!!
                                      

After everyone crushed out their cigarette, we resembled a small mob walking towards the horse tank where all the livestock get a drink of water and the corral was ankle deep in mud and large quantities of bovine body waste.  Or as country folks call it 'cow shit and pee' and it's also been known to be called feed lot pudding by those in the live stock industry. The older boy's instructed me to sit on the edge of the horse tank and hold on tight to a very long cotton rope that was attached to a large young cow and not let go.  If I was able to hang on to that rope for 8 seconds, I would then have passed my initiation and would be recognized as a real Texas cowboy.  While I wrapped that rope around my arm like it was a coiled snake, all the boys' jumped up on the corral fence in great anticipation of what was about to take place.  Jerry swung the gate open and Jimmy hit the cow in the butt with a hot shot and I was jerked off that horse tank in a flash!  I couldn't see anything and was having to breath through my nose because I had my mouth clamped shut. When I finally got up off the ground for what seemed like forever, all I could hear were the cheers from my cousins. "Way to go Buck!  You did it, you did it! You're a real cowboy now Buck."  I was so proud of myself.  I got the approval of the 'big boys' and now I was one of them.

When I entered the house to tell all the adults of my accomplishment, I remember my Indian mother's mouth being wide open in disbelief and saying, "Oh my God son!  What happened to you?"  Every pocket on my shirt and jeans had mud, cow shit and pee in them.  My face was brown from the spray of the water and urine in the corral, my ears were packed and my hair had no telling what in it.  Needless to say the adults weren't that impressed with my becoming a cowboy and were more interested in knowing which of my cousins were responsible for this act of juvenile mischief.  Being a 5-year old I naturally told everything!  I was now one of the 'big boy's' and proud of it.

 Once I identified everyone involved in my initiation, Uncle Skinny reached inside the pantry in the kitchen and took down his razor strap and walked out the back door.  During this period of time, it was normal for children to be disciplined with a belt or strap.  It was easy to tell when Uncle Skinny was really made, because all the veins in his neck would pulsate with every beat of his heart and this time they were throbbing like a mocking bird's ass on a high line wire.  Uncle Skinny walked very rigid over to the picnic table and yelled "You damn boy's get over here.  Now!"  The uncle yelled loud enough that it's a pretty safe bet the people living in Arizona could hear him. The two younger boy's began crying immediately, while Jerry and Jimmy's face resembled a glazed doughnut.  There was no doubt in anyone's mind in Armstrong County there was going to be an ass whoopin' that day.

By 1967, I had improved my skills of working with farm and ranch animals.  I even rode in a couple of rodeos in the bull riding event, but came to the conclusion this was not a sport I could excel in.  To be honest, I wasn't all that good to begin with.  My two brothers and I came to Wellington for the summer and worked in our grandparents drive-in, called the Dixie Maid, to make money for school clothes. Jokingly I've said for years that I was probably related one way or another to 65% of the people in Wellington and the remaining 35% were just traveling through.  The farming and ranching industry in that town is one of the primary sources of income, so it's not all that uncommon to see horses and cattle everywhere.  One afternoon after working the lunch run at the drive-in, I was told that the following day everyone was getting up at 6am to work about 40 head of cattle and it was going to be a full day of hard work.  I was smiling like a jackass eating briars when I heard this, but 6am is way earlier than I had been getting up.  Oh well, time to saddle up and make it happen.

My two brothers Chet and Tom worked as hard as the rest of us.  The first place we started at was my grandfathers best friend Claude Smith's place and he had cows that needed to be branded, de-horned and castrated.  Since my grandfather had worked on numerous ranches in his life, he was magnificent in telling us what we needed to do and how to do it correctly.  My grandfather and Claude did the castrating while my two brothers and I were responsible for herding the cows into what's called a 'cradle' where they could be locked down and kept from moving around.  This was going to be a one-stop situation for the cows.  They would be herded into the cradle, clamped down, branded if needed, then de-horned and castration was last with the testicles pitched into a bucket to be cooked later.  Ever heard of Mountain Oysters?  Things were going along like a well oiled machine that morning and we had this down to a science by 9am.  Our grandmother was cooking everyone breakfast outside just like she did when they lived and worked for the Mill Iron ranch...hot biscuits, bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs and a large pot of camp fire cooked coffee.  Man that was good.

Long about one that afternoon the temperature was closing in on triple digits, flies were so abundant the cows were getting rest less and the stench of burnt hair from the branding was getting a bit gamey.  Chet and Tom's faces were red as a turkey's butt and the sweat was just pouring off their faces.  They were sending a cow down the chute toward the cradle and this particular cow had it in his mind that he was NOT going peacefully.  I twisted his tail to get him moving and once his head went through the opening at the other end of the cradle, Claude's hired hand Clint clamped his head down and now all is good.  Anytime a cow or horse is being castrated, it's imperative the back legs are spread wide open and tied down to keep the animal from hurting itself or the person doing the cutting.

Once the animal was secured, Clint and I spread the cow's legs open and anchored them with rope to the corral fence.  Just as my grandfather put the hot branding iron on the cow, it shot a string of cow shit about 10 feet straight back up the chute and hit Chet square in the middle of his chest.  Not only did Chet get nailed, but that string of cow shit streamed down from his chest all the way to his belt.  He was not the least bit happy and of course the rest of us thought it was hilarious.  Chet stomped all the way to the back of the pen repeating, "Damn I hate cows!  I don't want to do this crap anymore.  It's hot and the damn flies are drivin' me nuts.  Damn I hate cows!  Dammit Buck, it ain't funny!  Stop laughing."  I'm not sure if Chet saw Tom doubled over with laughter by the horse tank, but the poor kid was almost in tears.  This bit of excitement and humor certainly brought things to a temporary stand still.  But after everyone regained their composure and Chet washed off his t-shirt in the horse tank, it was back to business as usual.  My grandmother said that was a moment she will always remember.
    

Getting A Colonoscopy? Leave Modesty and Privacy At Home

For my 50th birthday in 1999, my darling wife of 26 years informed me in her "nurse" voice that I needed to get a colonoscopy because I have family members on both my mother and fathers side of the family who've died from cancer.  To reinforce the urgency of her statement, she began rattling off the names of my relatives that have suffered from this nasty disease like a tobacco auctioneer.  My wife's 100% right.  I needed to get this took care of, the sooner the better, but I've got these lingering thoughts of what I've been told by my friends and some of the horror stories I've heard on television or read in magazines and newspapers. This whole process should really be a no brainer for cryin' out loud.  But all those images of having something shoved up my ass far enough to go pass my lungs and rest on my chin, well, that just didn't make it any easier to get my mind right about all of this.

This whole process of anus drilling started a few months earlier when an internal body part of mine started giving me fits and I went to our family doctor, Scott, for a check up.  Now, my wife and I have known Scott for years and he was more of a buddy than my doctor, but when he told me that because of my age and family history, he needed to do a sigmoidoscopy on me.  Every muscle in my body went limp.  I'm fairly certain that my facial expression resembled that of a glazed doughnut. The dog's are barkin', the front porch lights are on but ain't nobody home.  If you've never had the profound pleasure of having this procedure performed on you, then by all means let me explain it to you in a language I understand and speak very well.  First, you hop on this cold stainless steel table with nothing on but your socks, lay your naked chubby wrinkled butt down and then you're instructed to "roll over on your left side".  Second, the doctor and his nurse assistant, affectionately known as Attila the Hun, lay the back of your paper gown on your side exposing your naked butt for all to see and then proceed to insert a sophisticated bicycle pump hose way up your butt and shoot enough air inside your abdomen to inflate every tire on a fleet of school buses.  Oh baby, my abdomen felt like Mount St. Helen's preparing to explode!!  And finally, adding insult to injury, the Hubble Telescope is then inserted and the doctor begins the process of looking at everything in the lower colon, which by the way seems to take him hours to do.  A few weeks later Scott sends me a letter stating that everything was fine, but since I was turning 50 very shortly, I needed to get a colonoscopy just to be sure all is well.  Oh joy, oh rapture.  I...just...can't...wait.  In fact, I'm sitting on the very edge of my chair in great anticipation of this marvelous upcoming medical event.

 Since Scott is my primary physician, he then sends me to a friend of his that's a couple of miles away and this guy is going to be my proctologist for the next stage in my life's ongoing saga of When Will It All End.  I don't recall his name right off hand, but I do remember him having a strong jaw line like the actors James Dean and Charles Heston, with hands the size of a damn catchers mitt and a sense of humor that was no where to be found.  I thought to myself "Oh this is going to be just peachy!  Gee, I'm going to have Dudley Do Right perform my colonoscopy, nurse Rachette assisting, Phyllis Diller as my anesthesiologist, with the gang of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid manning the operating room.  What could possibly go wrong?"

As per the instructions from Dr. Dudley Do Right, the day before my colonoscopy I began my preparation by not eating any solid food whatsoever; all I had was beef broth, which tastes like warm, brown, salty water that leaves a horrible taste in the mouth.  Luckily for me, before I engaged in my next step I had talked with my middle brother Chet a few days before, who had already had a colonoscopy earlier, and he gave me some fantastic advice.  He said, and I quote, "Whatever you do, under no circumstances should you start drinking that powered water they've given you during the evening hours.  When I had my colonoscopy I didn't start drinking that nasty stuff until about 9pm and from that point on, I never got off the toilet, much less get any sleep."end quote.  So, Doctor Frankenstein and his side kick Igor neglected telling me about this part of the preparation.  Big joke! Ha, Ha! Watch him fill his bed with tra-lah-lah!!!  White man speak with forked tongue.  Hope many buffalo run through his teepee and take a powerful dump!!

I took off from work at noon the day before my colonoscopy and went home to begin a process that would bring discomfort and annoyance in my foreseeable future.  I took the two packets of powdered Go Lightly Laxative and mixed it in an empty plastic milk jug with lukewarm water.  Once the magical concoction was mixed, I then had to drink 12 ounces of it every 15 minutes until it was gone.  I discovered when purchasing my Go Lightly Laxative that it came in two, and only two, flavors:  cherry and lemon.  I chose the lemon flavor, but I can assure you in all honesty and without any fear of contradiction there was nothing about it that remotely resembled lemons at all.  It was more like a potion of furniture polish and melted crayons, with just a splash of lemon.  And before I go any further, I just wanted to say that whoever in the pharmaceutical industry thought giving a product of this caliber a name like Go Lightly or MoviPrep Laxative was humorous, they are sorely mistaken in all categories.  Sick bastards!!!

While mixing the toxic ingredients of my Go Lightly at the kitchen counter, it reminded me of the Disney movie Sleeping Beauty where the wicked witch Maleficent was preparing her poisoned apple for the princess.  Before I started drinking my concoction, I double checked the bathroom to ensure there was an ample supply of toilet paper - check; placed two new cans of orange fruit aerosol spray next to the sink - check, move the end table and lamp so that I've got a clear view of the television while 'sitting on the throne' - check.  I'm not going into graphic detail about everything that took place in my tiny room of anguish and swirling ceiling, but I will say that my legs went numb on more than one occasion from sitting too long and the hair in my nostrils and face fell off as if I were at ground zero of a nuclear blast.  I eliminated everything from my bowels that I had ingested since childhood and I had so much watery substance shooting out my backside, that by the 7th cup of Go Lightly I had to switch from the family favorite of Charmin toilet tissue to using cotton balls.  I was so sore and raw by the time my wife and son got home, I was walking as though I had a loaded tractor-trailer parked sideways in my butt.

I've never been able to understand why every time a person has surgery of any kind at a hospital, you must arrive at a ridicules hour before the sun comes up in order to start the preparation process.  After filling out more forms and papers than it takes to enact a law from Congress that basically stated I understood and agreed with what the forms said, I was taken to an area that had approximately 20 empty beds with little curtains around each of them.  At this point my recovery nurse, Helga the Crusher - her professional wrestling name, told me to get completely undressed and put on one of those back-less cloth gowns that in no way hides any part of the body from the neck to the back of the knees.  Every dangling part of my body sucked up inside my stomach for warmth, because the temperature in the recovery room was cold enough to hang sides of beef.  My lovely wife tired of hearing my teeth chatter and watching my breath crystallize, grabbed a couple of blankets off the bed nearest me and covered me up.  Shortly there after my nurse Helga came and put a needle in a vein on my left hand and started a drip of this wonderful drug called Versed, which not only knocks a person out completely, but should you wake up during the procedure, you won't remember a damn thing.  Oh yeah, Versed is a friend of mind whenever I've got to be operated on.

When all the equipment and staff in the procedure room were ready, and I had multiple drops of Versed in my veins, I was wheeled into this room that had a lot of monitors and large lights.  There to greet me in their surgical scrubs and masks were Dr. Dudley Do Right, nurse Rachette and Phyllis Diller my anesthesiologist.  The gang of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid arrived a few moments after me and I could hear them talking among themselves while shuffling medical tools, when Phyllis Diller said "Goodnight Jim."

The next thing I know my wife is leaned over and kissing me on the cheek.  Nurse Helga pulled the curtains back and asked how I was feeling.  Other than my mouth being very dry and tasting as though the entire 3rd Marine Division had marched across my tongue, I felt great.  Helga told me that I would have to stay in bed for another 30 minutes for the Versed to wear completely off; however, I could have anything I wanted to drink - juice, water or coffee.  I said "Coffee would be great!  And I take my coffee just like I do my women -- hot and racy!!!"  Were it not for the fact I was still under the influence of Versed, I'm positive my darling wife would've punched me so hard that by the time my big ass hit the ground my clothes would've been out of style.  Yep, I certainly dodged the bullet on that one.  While sipping on my lovely nectar of the Gods (aka coffee), Dr. Dudley Do Right walked over to my bed and said he found only two polyps and that he would send them off to the laboratory for testing to determine if they were cancerous.  It didn't take that long for him to have the results and I was cancer free!!! Whew!!  Was I ever glad this was over.

Now, on a personal level.  Getting a colonoscopy is only as scary as your imagination makes it.  There are mountains upon mountains of evidence that prove by getting regular check-ups with your doctor and having a colonoscopy starting at your 50th birthday is a step in the right direction in beating cancer....do NOT hesitate.  See your doctor...have it done...and be around to love your family.  You and you alone are in charge with this part of your destiny.

Neighbor's - A Right Good Source of Humor

I've lived in many places over the years and it was always best to get along with the neighbors if at all possible, regardless if I lived way out in the country where the hoot owl's screw the roosters or in town where the dogs are fatter. My young bride and I lived in Maryland for 22 years and during that time, I had neighbors who were extremely intelligent and then I had those that needed to call tech support just to open a lawn chair. And by the way, there's an ample supply of rednecks/hillbillies up and down the entire east coast.  They may not all wear bib-overalls, talk with a twang or only have two teeth in their entire head, but rest assured I've seen and talked with plenty of them where the sharing of chewing tobacco and snuff between husband and wife....it's a marital thing ya'll.

My young bride and I bought our very first house in January 1984 and our new home was built in a brand spanking new subdivision.  Our neighbors Lee and Sue were having their house built the same time as ours, so we certainly did some bonding during the seven years that we lived there.  Lee was the type of person that no matter what you had done or was going to do....he did it first,faster, better and cheaper.  Oh yeah, that kind of person.  One rainy summer night there was a knock on the door and there stood Lee soaking wet, mud on his pants and he wanted to know if I would like to have a full keg of beer?  He had been playing beer softball for the past 6-hours and both teams had already killed one keg at the ball field, so when it started raining real hard they had to quit and he brought the extra keg home with him.  I would never turn down a full keg of beer, especially since it was not going to cost me anything and besides, we had out of town guests who enjoy drinking beer.

Off I go with Lee to get the keg from the deck in his backyard and I thought it was a little odd for all the lights down stairs to be turned off, but then again Lee was one strange duck to begin with, so I didn't give it another thought.  Free beer is free beer.  A couple of days later Sue and my wife were talking out in the yard and my wife was told why I got the keg of beer.  When Lee got home from the ball field, he drug that muddy keg of beer through the middle of the living room, knocked over the coffee table, broke a large lamp and vase, put two holes in the wall and left a wide muddy streak down the middle of the white carpeting.  He made enough noise to wake the dead getting that keg through the front door and it woke Sue out of a sound sleep, and that's when the fight started.  My wife said that Sue was still madder than a crazed peach orchard boar at Lee and the atmosphere in their house was a little...bit...intense.

I'm fairly confident that even in Lee's drunken stupor, he was more than appreciative that his wife was NOT a certified proctologist, because he would've discovered how a beer keg can be turned into a very large suppository.  (I would've paid good money to see that.)  When Sue came downstairs and discovered the mess, she got all over him faster than a fat kid at a cake buffet and told him he had 5-minutes to get that nasty keg out of "her house" or else she was going to slap him so hard that by the time his ass hit the ground his clothes were going to be out of style. Yep, mamma Sue had a severe case of the red ass that night.

When my wife I moved to south Texas we discovered the city had a recycle program and they provided a green laundry basket size container to put our glass bottles, newspapers, magazines and small cardboard boxes in, with Tuesday being the pick-up day.  One morning after my wife came home from working the graveyard shift at the hospital, I went out in the garage and carried our recycle container to the street for pick-up and then went back in the garage to begin putting a lawn fertilizer together.  A few minutes later two of my elderly neighbors came walking towards my house on their way to the park where they went for a walk everyday that it's not raining.  While I'm sitting on the garage floor putting this lawn fertilizer together, they stopped at my recycle basket and the woman said, "Oh for heavens sake, just look at all those empty booze bottles.  Leonard, I think our new neighbors are lushes and we certainly don't need to have anything to do with these drunks."  From where I was sitting they didn't see me and had no clue I heard every word that woman said.  Well....it's show time.

 Having never met these people before I could've: (a) been very mature and adult about the nasty comment this woman had made about my wife and I and chalk it up as ignorance on her part, (b) jump up and get into a screaming match with them and have the police called on me, or (c) do what I do best --- embarrass them in public in a humorous fashion and create an event they'll never forget for as long as their breathing air.  It was going to be a week before the next recycle pick-up, so I had ample time to formulate a plan that would be fitting for an individual of my devious talents.  

For the next six days I went to our friends homes, every dumpster and liquor store within five miles of my house to collect as many empty beer bottles, beer cans, and wine bottles I could get my hands on, and this was in addition to my own recyclables.  As the volume of my scavenged booty began to increase, I went to my local grocery store and picked up a few cardboard boxes and filled them with everything I had collected.  These two neighbors were as punctual as a German made clock and I knew that in order to pull this stunt off with stunning success, my timing had to be perfect or else I would loose that moment of surprise and shock.  Just a few minutes before sundown Monday, I went to the tool shed and gathered up those items I had collected and took it inside my garage where it would stay until the next morning. At exactly 8am, my neighbors came out of their house en-route the park just like any other day and when they got within approximately 10' of my driveway, I opened my garage and came running towards them as fast as I could carrying my green recycle basket.  They stopped and looked at me while I ran back inside the garage and came out with my hand dolly that was stacked 8 boxes high of empty bottles and cans.

Standing with my booty in front of me I said, "Blimy! What a blow out last night! All the hooch and half naked women running around the pool it looked like one of those pagan heathen rituals ya' read about in National Geographic. I sure hope we didn't disturb you fine peoples sleep.  Why I was just sayin' to my wife Eunice the other day.  Eunice I said, ya' know darlin' we sure need to invite some of our neighbors over for one of them meet and greet things I've heard so much about.  And you know what my wife said to me?  Eunice said 'it wouldn't be hospitable for us to force ourselves on our new neighbors so soon, it would look like we was being mighty uppity.  We'll wait until summer and then have everyone over.  You catch us a mess of possums and coons and filet them, I'll whip up a big batch of Grannie's red eye gravy from the drippings of the critters, make my dandelion salad with pecans and for dessert I'll make mama's special rhubarb brownies.  Once they get a sniff of those vittles cookin', they'll be hungry enough to eat the hemorrhoids out of a dead gorilla's butt'."  That was the first and last conversation I had with those people - they moved to an assisted living.

The neighborhood where we currently live reminds me of a fish aquarium in a weird sort of way. There's the retired people on one side of the subdivision that walk their dogs or do the power walking routine in the mornings after all the kids have gone to school. Starting about 5:30pm is when the younger working people start their routines of jogging down the street and taking their dogs for a walk.  There's not a lot of activity taking place between 10am-5pm except for this one old woman that's crazier than a sack full of rabid weasels.  She isn't very big to begin with and might weigh 100 pounds soaking wet.  Come rain, sleet, freezing rain or sunshine, granny hits the bricks and does who knows how many power walking laps around the neighborhood before going home.  And she walks the same route twice a day.  To be perfectly honest, I don't know how the old woman keeps her jogging/yoga pants up --- she ain't got no ass.

There is a universe's difference between our next door neighbors outdoor routine and ours.  They're very sweet people, in their mid- to late 50's and give new meaning to the phrase 'gotta stay in shape'.  Lisa and Charlie compete in triathlons, Iron Man competitions, marathons and thus far, the only exercise I've not seen them do is lift weights.  Earlier this month I noticed a large white van parked in front of their house and when I asked Charlie about it he said,"That's my van.  I bought it so that 6 people can store all the cycle equipment, cycles, tools, extra space for suit cases and bags, and I'm putting in 6 captain's chairs.  This way there won't be any need for everybody taking their own cars and we can all ride in the van."  Glad to see my neighbor is thinking outside the box.  I got only one question: are the other cyclists splitting the cost of the van or is Charlie footin' the entire bill?

I can't speak for anybody else, but I for one absolutely hate jogging. I'd rather sniff camel farts in a Saharan dust storm than go jogging.  It hurts my feet and knees, and I get just as much exercise and produce as much sweat from working outside in the hot sun as I would pounding the pavement.  So you can imagine my delight when I see my neighbors start doing their stretching exercises while I'm sitting in my folding chair in the drive-way drinking a cold 16oz Coors and listening to great tunes from my stereo.  Obviously I'm not privy to how much $$$ they've got invested in their sport, but from what I've heard and seen in stores that sell this kind of equipment and clothing, it's not cheap. In addition, they've also got the entry fee's to pay and any travel expenses they may have incurred along the way.  Since moving to my current neighborhood, I've come to an analytical conclusion that I'm certain will be proven by the brights minds in the nation.  The sole purpose for spandex, Speed-O's and yoga pants is to function as a push up bra for the butt.