Urban newspapers cover the big weather failure to the satisfaction, I suppose, of their city subscribers. In the outposts victimized by drouth, printed words describing the disaster are superficial. Dehydrated bodies of starved lambs abandoned by hungry ewes on the feed ground and the profiles of hairball calves trailing along behind the herd stealing milk are difficult pictures to paint in ink, especially for a reporter raised in the city.

Unlike the Richter scale that rates earthquakes, drouths haven't an index. The only base is the county agent's report: "weather conditions are poor for planting and deficient for subsoil moisture," or a broader definition, "all areas in the state are in need of additional deep soil moisture."

Livestock bankers come closer to evaluating dry spells than anyone around town except the herders. Shortgrass jugkeepers once had the sharpest aim of any financial marksmen in the country to target weather disasters. Before the massive banking systems moved in from out of state to seize the deposits to loan elsewhere, the local banks were the best allies ranchers and farmers ever knew, and many existing small jugs still are to this day.

Government programs further confirm the mystery of drouths to outsiders. Last year's disaster program covered 18 states. Flood and drouth victims shared in a five million dollar pot big enough to cover the losses west of San Angelo and probably not enough to remove the bullfrogs from under the kitchen sinks in the high-water districts. Percentage of grazing conditions determined payment for the drylanders, but no one knew to what degree you had to be out of grass to be paid.

Ranchers who sold out prior to application were penalized. I'd have loved to have known whether folks flooded on the Mississippi Delta received help to build an ark, or were paid according to the height of the water marks in their living rooms. But I don't smart off around government offices. In particular, government offices where our fate hangs on a thread one strand thinner than a spider's web and you expect any moment to hear Gabriel's horn over the Musak.

Keeping books on drouths out on the range, like all our home systems, is simple. All across the shortgrass country feed bills have been above normal for 10 years. After hearing and reading over and over the common complaint by ranchers of how much a new pickup costs, I hit upon tallying my drouth losses on how many new pickups I've fed up since I bought my last one in 1992. The count reached 14 custom cabs or 11 crew cabs the first of March of this year. My projections show if winter lasts until the first of August, I'll have invested a sizable fleet in number two corn and 20 percent range cubes.

Younger ranchers don't have to use my system. They can substitute semesters of college tuition, rooms of new furniture, extra bathrooms for the home, ocean cruises to the Bahamas, years of teachers' salaries (man or wife), or percentage of inherited income to calculate their losses. Side income for the young may differ, also, by expanding Mother's Day to include "Mom's" certificate of deposit as surety on the notes at the bank, bounty hunting for smugglers on the Mexican border, tearing up part of the flooring in the ranch house to make a mushroom garden, and sharpening tools for shearing crews (nights only).

Again, recordkeeping need not be complicated. Progress can be jotted down in out of date savings account books. Notching a stick like the Indians used to count buffalo hunts is a good way to keep a livestock inventory. Just don't pull the stick out at a tax audit, or at the bank, because drouth ranchers are under enough suspicion without extra symptoms of incompetence.

In all these years, the only newspaper to ever call the ranch was the Livestock Weekly, and they weren't calling for my opinion on the drouth, but were looking for an article lost in the mail. Takes a plenty savvy scribe to interview the herders out here in good or bad years. By the time all the woes are expounded upon and anti-coyote plugs slipped in, no space is left to share the advantages of being a herder.

But perhaps the reason we are so hard to reach is because we are all waiting for one more glorious spring followed by a beautiful fall when the old country blossoms into a verdant force, making lambs and calves break into a run at the slightest provocation. Be hard for anyone to see why that's worth waiting for 10 years at a span.

May 11, 2000

Beautiful warblers, orioles, kingbirds and numerous other birds I don't recognize lay over on Mustang Island after a long flight across the Gulf from South and Central America. The migration happens in April. Having friends who like to bird watch and friends who scorn bird watching, I have to be more on guard than the birds.

Pressed by a stranger why I am visiting the coast, I carry a sand dollar in my pocket I bought in a shell store in San Francisco 20 years ago to display as my latest find. Pressed by a herder why I visit the coast, I drop my head and mumble, "My German ancestor landed in 1843 close to Port Aransas. My ol' great grandpappy started our lands from the island. The least I can do is spend his birthday down there."

Bird watching caught on at Port Aransas four or five years ago. Rockport and Goose Island up the coast were the original hotspots because of the whooping cranes, but now all the coastal maps designate refuges; local people guide tours free of charge.

Folks wearing binoculars hanging on straps are as common at the post office as on the beach. I was afraid to wear a pair in public for fear someone might ask what kind of bird was perching on a high-line, or bathing by the curb. Instead of going to the inland bird watching spots, I walked every morning and afternoon along the coast to conceal my ignorance.

Shore birds (and I suppose they are residents) feasted on the bugs hiding in the tons and tons of seaweed washing up on the beach. Only competition the gulls and terns had was a city employee running a John Deere grader up and down the beach, scraping the seaweed into piles. On his best days, he probably wasn't behind more than 5000 tons at quitting time. The inexorable forces of the sea are always going to outmatch 12 feet of grader blade powered by a diesel engine.

Shell collectors walked along barefooted between the water's edge and the weeds. Determined mothers herded kids in pink and yellow sun suits through the smelly stuff to wade in the shallows. One morning on the way to the beach, I found a green handled, sponge rubber mop to use as a walking stick and make-do putting iron. The roaring of the sea and brisk winds brought on a deep distraction. I wandered along unaware of time or place. One end of the mop worked at sifting sand in crab holes and the swab portion make a good rake to cover up tracks and push the sand off shells or litter.

Seaward, as I turned down the coast, a gray-headed man paralleled my course, carrying a shell sack but never looking down at the beach. The poor chap suffered pronounced upper torso head and shoulder spasms. We both wore the same color black swimming trunks, fitted slightly below our protruding waistlines.

At the same point, we turned and started back up the beach. He looking straight ahead, the empty plastic bag fluttering in the winds; myself pausing to switch ends of the mob to use for whatever caught my curiosity. Soon I became aware of the crowds fading back on the dunes, the way sharks or stingrays empty an area. Kids stopped wading or building sand castles. Beach chairs and sun shades faced toward land. Mothers wearing extra dark sun glasses took a defiant stance, blew cigarette smoke through their nostrils, and glared at these two strange beachcombers.

Behind us, people moved into the water. Shell gatherers threw sticks to dogs and children played ball and splashed the sea. Next, I noticed when I looked back, if the old gent wasn't trembling too much, he did, too. Slow and clear, the message came, "Monte, you have made a spectacle of yourself again. Those people, those strangers, think you are using the mop to mop up the seaweed, and heavens knows what they think of a shell collector holding his head at the eye level of a brown pelican."

Island law forbids using the old trails going over the dunes as a shortcut to the beach house, but I dropped the mop in a trash barrel and went right on over the top to safety without ever looking back to see what happened to my teammate.

Every time I visit the charming little island, I return refreshed and healed by the sea. Two things, however, are going to change: I am not going to use mops or brooms for walking sticks, and I'll never, never stare at a man with the St. Vitus Dance again without compassion ...

May 18, 2000

Beautiful warblers, orioles, kingbirds and numerous other birds I don't recognize lay over on Mustang Island after a long flight across the Gulf from South and Central America. The migration happens in April. Having friends who like to bird watch and friends who scorn bird watching, I have to be more on guard than the birds.

Pressed by a stranger why I am visiting the coast, I carry a sand dollar in my pocket I bought in a shell store in San Francisco 20 years ago to display as my latest find. Pressed by a herder why I visit the coast, I drop my head and mumble, "My German ancestor landed in 1843 close to Port Aransas. My ol' great grandpappy started our lands from the island. The least I can do is spend his birthday down there."

Bird watching caught on at Port Aransas four or five years ago. Rockport and Goose Island up the coast were the original hotspots because of the whooping cranes, but now all the coastal maps designate refuges; local people guide tours free of charge.

Folks wearing binoculars hanging on straps are as common at the post office as on the beach. I was afraid to wear a pair in public for fear someone might ask what kind of bird was perching on a high-line, or bathing by the curb. Instead of going to the inland bird watching spots, I walked every morning and afternoon along the coast to conceal my ignorance.

Shore birds (and I suppose they are residents) feasted on the bugs hiding in the tons and tons of seaweed washing up on the beach. Only competition the gulls and terns had was a city employee running a John Deere grader up and down the beach, scraping the seaweed into piles. On his best days, he probably wasn't behind more than 5000 tons at quitting time. The inexorable forces of the sea are always going to outmatch 12 feet of grader blade powered by a diesel engine.

Shell collectors walked along barefooted between the water's edge and the weeds. Determined mothers herded kids in pink and yellow sun suits through the smelly stuff to wade in the shallows. One morning on the way to the beach, I found a green handled, sponge rubber mop to use as a walking stick and make-do putting iron. The roaring of the sea and brisk winds brought on a deep distraction. I wandered along unaware of time or place. One end of the mop worked at sifting sand in crab holes and the swab portion make a good rake to cover up tracks and push the sand off shells or litter.

Seaward, as I turned down the coast, a gray-headed man paralleled my course, carrying a shell sack but never looking down at the beach. The poor chap suffered pronounced upper torso head and shoulder spasms. We both wore the same color black swimming trunks, fitted slightly below our protruding waistlines.

At the same point, we turned and started back up the beach. He looking straight ahead, the empty plastic bag fluttering in the winds; myself pausing to switch ends of the mob to use for whatever caught my curiosity. Soon I became aware of the crowds fading back on the dunes, the way sharks or stingrays empty an area. Kids stopped wading or building sand castles. Beach chairs and sun shades faced toward land. Mothers wearing extra dark sun glasses took a defiant stance, blew cigarette smoke through their nostrils, and glared at these two strange beachcombers.

Behind us, people moved into the water. Shell gatherers threw sticks to dogs and children played ball and splashed the sea. Next, I noticed when I looked back, if the old gent wasn't trembling too much, he did, too. Slow and clear, the message came, "Monte, you have made a spectacle of yourself again. Those people, those strangers, think you are using the mop to mop up the seaweed, and heavens knows what they think of a shell collector holding his head at the eye level of a brown pelican."

Island law forbids using the old trails going over the dunes as a shortcut to the beach house, but I dropped the mop in a trash barrel and went right on over the top to safety without ever looking back to see what happened to my teammate.

Every time I visit the charming little island, I return refreshed and healed by the sea. Two things, however, are going to change: I am not going to use mops or brooms for walking sticks, and I'll never, never stare at a man with the St. Vitus Dance again without compassion ...

May 18, 2000

First Mexican cowboy to work in this neighborhood was in the 1930s on the Vancourt Brothers ranch. Reason the date is clear in memory is that in the decade of the 30s we wound up shipping much stuff from the Divide down to the railroad. Along then we trailed our calves and lambs to Noelke Switch via the Vancourt ranch, where the Mexican and his family lived.

Another reason I remember, he was the first cowboy in my young life to leave his horse saddled in the middle of the day. Several times, I watched him ride up to the bunkhouse, tie his horse hard and fast, and fold his stirrups over the seat of his funny-looking Old Mexico saddle.

Mother tried to explain that people have different customs, but she couldn't convince me they were so strange they left their horses saddled in the hot sun. I'd read enough J. Frank Dobie stories to know the state used lots of Texas Rangers in the old days to patrol the Rio Grande. I figured the reason the cowboy kept his horse saddled was so he could make a fast getaway back across the border some 165 miles away. I further knew if the Rangers shot him, he'd be buried in an unmarked grave, face down, for leaving his horse saddled at dinner.

Small bay, black mane and tail horses from Coahuila were our next exposure to Mexico. Agile, unbroken little devils, they needed a saddle soaking on their backs day and night. The biggest part of their body was their heart and the huge brands on their hips. The first summer we had what we called espanoles on the ranch was the summer I earned my Indian name, "Git Back On."

I spent a lot of mornings mounting, catching, and remounting a horse named Pete, who expressed his resentment of an Americano by watching for the chance to buck him off. Pete liked an audience. Was very responsive to day hands. Wanted to wait until we were about to split up at the pasture gate to put on his show. Had it been my choice, I'd have preferred a private showing of my clumsy efforts at horse tuning. But sure as we had extra help, I'd end up on the ground, cursing and trying to hold Pete by my last remaining rein.

Fifteen years or longer passed before unpapered aliens were to became common this far from the Border. The ranches in the cow jungle of South Texas and the salt marshes of the Coastal Plains worked Mexican vaqueros a long time ahead of us. A few men drifted in on the shortgrass outfits, but were used more as ground help than the aerial pursuit of being a cowboy.

To jump ahead, the "wets" became legal passport help. Soon, the passport families moved into town to school the kids and became town folks with high-paying jobs. In sum, the ranchers went back to work, the last Mexican cowboys left were over 60 years old, and Social Security benefits were fast terminating their careers.

Last year, I did contact Mexico by buying a gentle horse from there, a dun pony from so far down in the desert country of Coahuila, our horse trap looked lush to him. He grazed all winter on the six-minute grama grass stubs. On the days I rode him and fed him by himself, he'd leave over half his oats in the trough. He refused sweet feed; ignored range cubes spilled in the back of the pickup.

He also became fidgety when I brushed off his back. Acted like a curry comb was a strange weapon and balked four feet from the trailer gate in sheer terror of a wooden floor. From the looks of the marks on his back, I knew he'd been ridden hard under half-rigged saddles and dirty blankets. Every time I bridled him, he made those awful rollers in his nose, meaning distrust. But one morning, he was a completely different horse. Didn't have to be hemmed up in the corner to catch, or show the slightest signs of distrust. He stood still to be brushed and was easy to saddle.

Slowly the change came to light. For breakfast, I'd had corn tortillas soaked in a ranchero sauce on scrambled eggs. Right there before my eyes was the simple answer to his dietary and behavior problem. On the next trip to San Angelo, I bought 50 pounds of masa harina (corn tortilla flour) from Pop's Tortilla Factory. Every morning, I sprinkle a cup full on his oats. Now he devours every grain; nickers when he sees me leave the house for the barn.

Wish I knew where ol Pete's bones are on the ranch. Old tricksters like he was probably have an ant bed or a black wasp's hole over their grave. Been so long ago I can't remember if he ate gringo oats. One thing I do know, I sure didn't mind turning him loose in the middle of the day.

May 25, 2000

All on the same recent morning, the radiotelephone at the ranch failed and my left hearing aid crashed. Investigation is continuing into whether it might be connected to the infamous "I love you" virus. I was able to contact an employee in Mertzon right a way on a cell phone to report the outage. He was instructed to tell General Telephone, the local carrier, that my number was not in order. Also, I told him when he contacted repair to tell the clerk my left hearing aid was out, too.

At 9 a.m. the telephone came back on, but the hearing aid started making the same sound a kid makes sucking the last drops of Coke through a straw. At 9:30 a.m., the telephone company called to find out if my telephone was working. "Mr. Nolek*," she said, "is your telephone number nineonefive-threeninezerotwofourthreefour?" Stumped by the way she reeled off the numbers, I looked over in the open telephone book and read, "are you oneeighthundredfoureight threeonethousand? If so, this call may be monitored by my supervisor and the Attorney General of the State of Texas." (* Nolekshould be my stage name, as people are always pronouncing Noelke that way. A nolek is a smut-colored tropical fish that rarely ever contacts telephone employees.)

After a silence, she said, "Mr. Nolek, your call is being forwarded to my supervisor." In a few minutes, a very brisk voice came on apologizing for the misunderstanding. I accepted her apology. Told her I needed to know whether the telephone company knew yet if my telephone going out coinciding with my left hearing aid crashing was connected to the "I love you" virus over the Internet. Her manner changed after I explained the ranch was not on-line. Not a perceptible brushoff, yet a message the file was closing. She ended the call, promising to look into the matter.

Without knowing the peculiarities of my hearing aid, the telephone company can't evaluate the problem. As I reported once before, on muggy days, my hearing aids pick up the cattle market at Guymon, Oklahoma off a satellite. Engineers responsible for the aerial at the ranch ask us to report any trouble on the new system. I took being a test case serious after learning the hookup cost 8000 bucks. If I withhold information about the technology of having a satellite phone in a remote place, receiving through a hearing aid, I am no better than the hackers trying to destroy communications.

Wearing hearing aids causes lots of other complications. The other night at the box office at a play in Houston, a young girl kept repeating over and over a litany I thought might be about releasing the theater of liability, but all I heard was a mewing sound. Finally, the guy behind punched me in the back and said,"Tell her you can't hear well enough to be shocked by offensive language, so the line can move on, bud."

Next morning the hotel clerk became so annoyed at having to repeat directions to the art museum, I jerked out a hearing aid and said, "Hon, speak into this and I'll stick it back in my ear real fast to catch your words." She whipped a map from a drawer and drew the way in deep black colored pencil. At lunch, I tried to catch her eye, but she'd had more of a test on the morning shift than she'd ever been tested at hotel training school.

The Mertzon post office is sympathetic toward deaf people. A sign in the lobby reads, "No dogs permitted in the building except for blind and deaf patrons." At the last mail run, I forewarned the clerk that I was going to train a hearing dog to listen for the tumblers falling on the lock to my post box by making a can opener for dog food give the sound of the ratcheting of a lock mechanism. (See "Stob" Crowell's book, "The Training Of Backdoor And Mattress Dogs.") She needed to be warned, as she might think the sounds were a thief drilling a box open.

The head of City of Mertzon Animal Apprehension Department, (A.A.D.) or the town dogcatcher, is an old pal of mine. He already has prospects in mind. He thinks one of those little short-eared looking mutts will make a better hearing dog than the larger flop-eared bassets or Walker hounds. The problem is the same as working in the human sphere. Lots of dogs can hear, but not many are willing to listen.

Looks like the case is going to die on linking the virus to my telephone and hearing aid. Next time the telephone company asks for my cooperation, they are going to have to research my problems to win me back. The play in Houston, by the way, contained lots of offensive features, including the language.

June 1, 2000

Promise of a new career caused me to take a layover in Austin last month on the way to Maryland. Without extra help, I guarded a three bedroom, two bath home in the South part of town for three days not allowing one intruder to break in the place. For 72 hours, I single handed resisted all comers, including a census taker on the grounds house sitters aren't bona fide residents of a domicile.

May sound easy being a house sitter in the state capital, the center of our justice system and the base of the creation of law and order. But consider these facts: Austin is growing at the rate of 150 citizens per day, meaning even if the crime rate dropped 8% in May as the newspapers claim, and the base figure comes to 8%, a dozen new burglars move to town every day needing to work.

Pinpointing crime in Austin is difficult, especially when the state legislature is in session. Wild charges of misconduct fly from each side of the aisle only to make a quiet landing after the press corps leaves the chambers to meet the day's deadlines. The best guideline to rate most of these gentlemen and ladies of glib tongues and eternal smiles is to consider them guilty until a break in the case, or a loophole in the law proves them innocent. However, as long as the worthies are on the capital grounds, the Chief of Police can't be blamed for what it takes to put on such a good show.

The huge Texas University student body further complicates defining the city's crime rate. The problem lies where library fines and parking tickets combined with spirited misbehavior on and off campus stop, and rigging pay phones and utility meters, breaches of promise, hazing and general civil disobedience become a criminal act. The wisest approach here, I think, is denial. Just act as if the 10's of thousands of U.T. students do not exist.

Also, keep in mind, Forbes magazine polled Austin as the best place to do business in the United States. This is for sure to have gained wide interest among the lawless. Upon reading the news, small town crooks probably took a deep look at the future in robbing the gum ball machine in front of the VFW Hall, or nicking the take at the newspaper rack in front of the bus station as the coin box fills in nickels.

Visions of the spoils of a high tech Austin economy is bound to flashed before their eyes. Thirty six hundred dollar lap tops, portable as a pair of roller skates and as merchantable as Krugerand arose in their dreams as sharp as the symbol of sugar plums of legend and verse. Eight hundred dollars worth of hubcaps flicked off 4 wheels of a Jaguar clanging on the curb made a tantalizing sound of easy money. The more creative envisioned kidnapping the groomed lap dogs the Austin rich hold in such high esteem. Others less ambitious thought of all the custom garden tools and thick rubber hoses just waiting to be snatched inside open garage doors.

But the hard part of my jobs was being on duty day and night, having to take calls. A.T. & T. rang on the hour wanting to sell long distance services. Spring and M.C.I. hit three times a day at meals. A. L. "Laudy" Jefferson's lawn service slipped a card under the door. "Try-Back Pizza" hung a coupon for a 12 inch free pie on the front door knob. And "Billy Marie's Beauty Shop" posted a rose colored circular offering three dollars off on a "perm."

In the day light hours, I scanned the back yard through a big picture window, sitting in a web backed rocking chair. Except for a rolling pen, I was unarmed. The only six shooter I own is a Colt I keep in the bank box in Mertzon. After all of my boys sneaked the old gun out for surreptitious target practice as ranch kids have done since the invention of gun powder, I stored it in the bank box to keep it from disappearing the way 4 or 5 pair of good spurs have been lost. The pistol wouldn't have helped anyway, unless the attack was on the right flank in line where the cylinder spits pieces of lead hot and fast as shrapnel.

I took regular naps and read three novels. Hardest physical work was rolling the trash can down to the curb for regular pickup. I am not going to charge a fee until I become more experienced. Having the Austin job on my resume is going to going to look good in out away places like San Angelo. I know the folks I worked for will give me a good recommendation.

June 8, 2000

Airfares are becoming hard to negotiate now that all of the country except agriculture is on a boom that'd make Christopher Columbus think he'd discovered the seven golden cities of Cibolo. Three weeks in advance of last month's trip to Baltimore and Washington D.C., I studied on-line and off-line fares without finding an agent willing to budge at any airline.

Delta finally gave a decent coach price from Austin. By then I'd clicked and dialed the "ticket saver's" and "cheap fares dot com's" until Amtrak and Greyhound started becoming a consideration for transportation, which is a sign of desperation. The cross country bus schedule may be bearable, but if the Hartford, Connecticut life insurance actuary tables handicapping graybeards my age are accurate, and the stories about Amtrak's arrivals are correct, I am already too old to complete a train trip from Austin to Baltimore.

Baltimore/Washington International is one of the three airports handy to the capital. Express metro trains shuttle passengers from the concourses right on down to D.C. Upon landing, I sought refuge in the restroom to readjust my gear and tuck in my shirttail. Just as I reached the lavatory, an old boy popped from a stall and started singing in a Southern drawl the following jazz melody: "The Queen of Sheba weighed a hundred and four pounds. All this day I fried that much hamburger patties. Counting pickles, onions, buns and cheese, I've lifted ol' Sheba twice today. Gonna' go home to 'Bud the beer' and Mary the gal. And rest my soul for another day. Oh, de Queen Sheba weighed a hundred four pounds. I done lifted her twice today."

Before I gave up and caught a cab to town, I tried to find rides on vans, busses, and trains in a speedway of airport traffic, and failed. The cabby hummed all the way, finding his beat in the meter clicking every third of a mile. In case you haven't observed, musicians, professional or amateur, hum in the daytime and snore a replay at night after playing a gig. I pass this on free of charge for ones dead bent on marrying a saxophonist or cello player. (Reader's Digest once quoted Mrs. John Phillip Sousa, wife of the famous band leader, as saying, "I am soured on married men, married life, and the institution of marriage after 30 years of sleepless nights listening to John snort out the brass section of his arrangements.")

Baltimore abounds in music and art. Cab drivers, fry cooks, and sidewalk troubadours, I was to learn, are supported by symphonies and chamber music in the high-class recital halls of the Peabody Conservatory, a dozen jazz places, and a huge new domed concert hall. Furthermore, 45-minute train service to Grand Central Station in D.C. adds all the attraction of the Kennedy Center. As a guy said at the intermission of a play, "My wife and I also make the little theater group at Annapolis."

Checked in, I realized I had made one bad mistake. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore College, and the Peabody School of Music, to name a few of the area's colleges, were holding May graduation services. My room on the third floor of an 1870 mansion overlooked the main passageway for graduates and families crossing the street to the big civic center. (One class was 5000 strong.)

The whole week, throngs of parents and grandparents trailed behind black-gowned scholars. Scholars who I knew will never come west to be cowboys or ranchers. Graduation time once meant a happy occasion, but now it is one more act in the death knell of the herding and tending of hollow horns and woolies. When the pool halls closed and all this malarkey about higher education spread, our labor supply was doomed. I regret to this day giving shaving lotion instead of buying cue sticks for graduation gifts. I don't recall ever hiring a cowboy who played golf and excelled in the academics, but I knew quite a few who were pool sharks and dropouts.

Cool showers on 75-degree afternoons and 60-degree nights washed away the memory of the drouth back home. Early of morning, the owner placed a newspaper and a pot of coffee on a marble-topped table by my chair in the drawing room. Seated so grand, I stared at my feet, thinking how far removed this is from pulling on your boots in an old ranch kitchen to walk to the barn and a dusty corral.

June 15, 2000

Man and his machines wiped away, I was to learn on my last trip, every vestige of the old harbor at Baltimore. Somewhere in H. L. Mencken's writing, rich descriptions tell of handsome clippers once anchored in the bay, rocking in the wash of overloaded whalers in from the spoils of the sea to share the lanes of fishing boats bringing in the late catch of soft shell crabs so famous on those eastern shores.

Today, the harbor is the finished product of all the successful attractions of any tourist development at any coastal city. My interest was twofold; first, to see the city's famous aquarium. Next, to test if I had the stamina to withstand 44 school bus loads of children celebrating the last week of school on a field trip in a state of anarchy that'd make Attila the Hun's rampages seem like an episode from Little Bo Peep.

I was able to enter the aquarium by being on hand, ticketed and ready to go at the opening gate. In long strides, swinging my elbows to hold off an attack from the rear, I ascended to the featured rain forest exhibit on the fourth level before the raucous juvenile voices and the bubble gum breaths of 44 grades drove the birds and small mammals deep into the jungle. (I estimated the four rows of yellow buses parked 11 to the row equaled 44 loads of kids at 60 to the bus to be 2640 students plus approximately 132 school teachers and an unknown number of room mothers.)

Outside the rain forest, I paused in a dark hall at the glassed cage of an Amazon bushmaster and a couple of green vine snakes. The bushmaster languished up in the front of the glass; the two vine snakes draped over live branches held in reptilian trance.

Rapid fire the memory returned of walking in the Amazon jungle along that enormous river, scanning the muddy ground for a deadly bushmaster or a bone-crushing boa constrictor, but the deepest shock was to read the information card real slowly: "The green vine snakes ... are a venomous Amazon valley reptile ... having the unusual trait of having ... fangs in the ends of their tails!

I moved back in the dark hall. My friend Harry Pearson and I never stepped off the rusty riverboat the time we bought passage on the Amazon without looking under the gangplank for snakes and caimans. In the jungle, Harry led the way on the dense trails in knee-high rubber boots. I tailed along in 12-inch top Wellington boots that felt as low cut as a pair of ankle socks in the tall grass. But, we never thought of a vine snake whipping his tail from above to hook his deadly fangs in our cheeks.

I wouldn't know which direction to run from a snake with tail fangs. In the simulated rain forest, every time a parrot or a monkey moved, I watched to keep from backing into a flock of kids. On the way out, I skipped the snakes and avoided the eels.

The Little Italy neighborhood lies within walking distance of the Inner Harbor. Compared to the vigorous Italian neighborhood in Boston, Baltimore's district is a quiet few blocks of fine ethnic food. Lunch specials posted in front of the restaurants offered a number of courses high priced enough to melt the imprint on a Diner's Club card.

I took a window table to be sure to keep in touch with the reflection of the bulge over my belt line and the thin line of my right hip pocket. I decided 19 bucks worth of the house salad and a $6 order of garlic bread should make a nice lunch. The waiter took his time. While I waited, the kitchen staff accepted delivery on a large order of take-out food from a Chinese restaurant. Seems at least they could have had the deliveryman come to the back door.

After lunch, I rode the water taxi across the harbor to Fells Point. Training on salad and bread, I knew not to exert myself and walk from the Italian district on a salad and bread training table. Immediately upon landing, however, I needed reserve strength. Fells Point turned out to be the hangout of the next generation older than the aquarium mob.

Fells Point is a historic district. The surrounding bay may well be the scene Mr. Mencken set so many years ago of clippers and whalers. It's a shame he didn't see the colorful tattooed and bejeweled crowd I waded through. Luck led me to a matinee performance of an excellent play. Secure in the theater, the sidewalk throngs were forgotten.

Late of evening, the sidewalks took on the music of a dozen troubadours using their hats to pay for the engagements. Baltimore keeps plenty of music at hand. I thought on the way back to my room, "Schoolteachers must need the whole summer vacation to recover from the last week of school."

June 22, 2000

Express Metro trains, I found on a May visit, shoot down to D.C. from Baltimore on the hour until way in the night. Passengers hardly unfold their newspapers before the train pulls into Washington Union Station. Cars are clean, the conductors polite and in control of the passengers of the many creed and classes.

Once outside the Washington station, a starter loads long lines of cabs. Fares are based on zones and the driver's honesty. Stern signs on the dividing window between the front and rear seats warn that the city exacts a $50 fine for passengers riding without the seat belts buckled. The law also keeps riders from bouncing on the broken seat cushion springs, bucking across the potholes of the capital's streets.

The luck of the draw in Washington cabs falls five to one against hiring an English-speaking driver in the daytime; twice those odds of hailing one after dark, when the shadows down every alley turn the trash cans the size of three muggers. One night going to a concert, a cabby in a turban and dressed in silk costume like Sinibad the Pirate, was so alarming that I shook so much after the ride, the screws holding my seat at the auditorium came loose. Good thing the music echoed the beat of castanets, or the usher would have thrown me out for making such a rattling racket.

But a zoning map wasn't necessary to check the fares as I always go to the National Gallery by taxi and ride the subway to the Phillips Collection and the Smithsonian museums. Our art treasures are the most positive part of being in the capital. We own thousands of pieces of precious objects. One hallway in our gallery contains more paintings than the entire collection of a country like say, Yugoslavia. Also, seeing once again the white domes and marble pillars of stately buildings, crowned by the "Stars and Stripes" fluttering on gold-capped poles makes me choke up the way singing the "Star Spangled Banner" did in the fifth grade.

I always become emotional visiting the capital. However, on this visit, an article in the Washington Post intensified my feelings. On the way down from Baltimore, I read Congress had appropriated 11 million dollars to help the sheep and goat herders. In a bill giving tobacco farmers three billion dollars, the paper said we were to receive 20 cents a pound on wool, 40 cents a pound on mohair and a nickel a pound, or three bucks a head, on 60-pound feeder lambs and five bucks a head on fats.

It made me ashamed of all the ugly things I had said about the Congress not knowing or caring what happens to the domestic sheep and goat industry. I'd been so selfish, I'd overlooked the tobacco farmers' troubles. The very morning the newspaper hit the stands, homeless guys in front of the Baltimore station were picking snipes off the sidewalks, enjoying free smokes without a dime going back to the farmers' pockets.

The important thing, however, was that somewhere in the Texas delegation, we had an old friend who understood we'd jump at any size bait. Whoever he was, he knew we were so dispirited that such paltry sums were not going to be intimidating. As Knute Rockefeller, or maybe it was John D. Rockne said, "It's not how you play the game, it's how much dignity you show limping off the field after you have lost the game."

The trains leaving D.C. become crowded early in the afternoon. The rush hour seems to be earlier where the majority is government employees. The five or six-hour days in the federal offices wear those folks down until a feeling of exhaustion overrides the aura of the car. Nearly all the passengers carry heavy briefcases home. That may be the reason so much stuff is missing when there's an investigation. I know I am always taking papers from the office to the ranch and misplacing them.

Something about living in Washington makes people lousy housekeepers and flat destroys memories. High moguls are forever losing records and misplacing files just as a congressional investigation hits full force. Seems the rap of a gavel in a federal judge's hand is the best memory stimulant; however, on her own, Mrs. Clinton found one missing file on a coffee table in her bedroom. She was probably straightening up after the maids changed shifts and there the file was, between a copy of Vogue and Good Housekeeping magazines.

Back in Baltimore, a second edition of The Post confirmed the appropriation passed the House. We might get a break after all. With that much dough in the tobacco farmers' pockets, they may get around to buying a new wool suit next winter, a mohair rug for the wife's Christmas, and a big platter of lamb chops to celebrate the windfall of the new century.

June 29, 2000

This incident occurred in Mexico City under the administration of President Carlos Salinas, who served from 1988 to 1994. The exact day, the 16th of September, or Diez Y Seis de Septembre, comes back better than the year as the wide avenues in the Capital were lined by all the military forces of the whole Republic. The exact location was slightly north of the President's Palace.

Snappy presidential honor guards presented arms; soft-whiskered cadets stood at rigid attention. A bearer holding the red, green and white flag of the republic on a slanted staff never wavered as President Salinas rode by, waving from a convertible. The Indian women surrounding my vantage point stared unmoved by the passing of a chief executive, as impassive as the stone images on the palace scrolls.

Congestion from bad planning jammed the young president's motorcade right in the forefront. The Indios' attention, however, focused on an organ grinder so big the owner had to have a helper to move his instrument, not to mention helping yank his monkey out of the reach of kids. He kept playing "Rancho Grande" over and over as if the old song was significant to the act. (The last time I told this story, he was playing the waltz "Cielito Linda," but "Rancho Grande" is a better polka for a monkey's dance.) The parade lasted longer than I did.

On this Sunday, the 2nd of July, Mexico elected a new president, defeating a party that has been in power for 71 years. Part of the initial shock from this side of the border is the large numbers of Mexican citizens who went back to vote. Mexico has no absentee voting. Booths were set up in the border towns and cities. Newspapers said a whopping 100,000 Mexicans were going home to vote from Los Angeles.

Projections of such huge numbers make the oldtime drawing power of the South Texas machine to bring Mexicans to this side of the Big River to vote seem like piddling small-time politics. Once, a border patrolman told us at the bunkhouse one night over supper that his first lesson in border democracy was catching a trio of wets above Brownsville carrying poll tax receipts in their packs. (In the 1950s, the $2.50 we paid to vote in Texas was called a "poll tax." In 1964, the 24th amendment to the Constitution made it illegal to charge to vote in federal elections.)

"The closer it came to Election Day, the more wets we disfranchised," he said. "A few carried sample ballots marked for a prominent county official."

As soon as the shock subsides from the new president, we are going to need to go back to business in the shortgrass country to estimate how long a cowboy or shearer is going to need off to go vote in Acuna or Piedras Negras. Cinco de Mayo and the 16th of September require about five weeks off the ranch with another week thrown in upon return to stabilize the celebrant. The "Cinco" and the "Diez y Seis" were already practically overlapping. July 2nd National Election Day might have to be shifted to fit in between "The Day of the Dead" and the traditional Mexican Christmas, the sixth of January.

Way back before working illegal aliens became against the law, quite a number of hands voluntarily deported themselves in August, especially if livestock were doing good enough to allow time to build fence. Deflecting flint rock with a crowbar tends to cause deep homesickness in the 100 degree August sun. Took me about 20 summers before I learned to shift the job chart to fit the economic needs of the cowboys.

President Fox says he favors a legal program to send workers to the U.S. We need his support. And it may be possible, as he owns a ranch and wears boots to work. Critics claim he doesn't have an economic plan. They probably don't realize how many notes he has written down in his tally book or scratched on the saddle house wall in marking chalk. Like the rest of us, he'll have to book his winter feed in the fall, be sure he has enough bulls to breed his cows, and then he'll be able to set about writing a budget before the December inauguration. (County agents were the first offices to advise ranchers over here to keep written records. Maybe we could do a lend lease deal on county agents until Mr. Fox learned to stop writing down counts on his gloves or his chap pocket.)

In time, we'll know how long voting takes in July compared to, say, seeing about sick grandmothers and sick sisters. I've been out of contact so long I may need a refresher. But I would suppose if you knew the price of "three X beer" extrapolated by the number of dollars per month salary, you'd find the amount of days needed to cast a ballot in Acuna, Coahuilla.

July 13, 2000

This incident occurred in Mexico City under the administration of President Carlos Salinas, who served from 1988 to 1994. The exact day, the 16th of September, or Diez Y Seis de Septembre, comes back better than the year as the wide avenues in the Capital were lined by all the military forces of the whole Republic. The exact location was slightly north of the President's Palace.

Snappy presidential honor guards presented arms; soft-whiskered cadets stood at rigid attention. A bearer holding the red, green and white flag of the republic on a slanted staff never wavered as President Salinas rode by, waving from a convertible. The Indian women surrounding my vantage point stared unmoved by the passing of a chief executive, as impassive as the stone images on the palace scrolls.

Congestion from bad planning jammed the young president's motorcade right in the forefront. The Indios' attention, however, focused on an organ grinder so big the owner had to have a helper to move his instrument, not to mention helping yank his monkey out of the reach of kids. He kept playing "Rancho Grande" over and over as if the old song was significant to the act. (The last time I told this story, he was playing the waltz "Cielito Linda," but "Rancho Grande" is a better polka for a monkey's dance.) The parade lasted longer than I did.

On this Sunday, the 2nd of July, Mexico elected a new president, defeating a party that has been in power for 71 years. Part of the initial shock from this side of the border is the large numbers of Mexican citizens who went back to vote. Mexico has no absentee voting. Booths were set up in the border towns and cities. Newspapers said a whopping 100,000 Mexicans were going home to vote from Los Angeles.

Projections of such huge numbers make the oldtime drawing power of the South Texas machine to bring Mexicans to this side of the Big River to vote seem like piddling small-time politics. Once, a border patrolman told us at the bunkhouse one night over supper that his first lesson in border democracy was catching a trio of wets above Brownsville carrying poll tax receipts in their packs. (In the 1950s, the $2.50 we paid to vote in Texas was called a "poll tax." In 1964, the 24th amendment to the Constitution made it illegal to charge to vote in federal elections.)

"The closer it came to Election Day, the more wets we disfranchised," he said. "A few carried sample ballots marked for a prominent county official."

As soon as the shock subsides from the new president, we are going to need to go back to business in the shortgrass country to estimate how long a cowboy or shearer is going to need off to go vote in Acuna or Piedras Negras. Cinco de Mayo and the 16th of September require about five weeks off the ranch with another week thrown in upon return to stabilize the celebrant. The "Cinco" and the "Diez y Seis" were already practically overlapping. July 2nd National Election Day might have to be shifted to fit in between "The Day of the Dead" and the traditional Mexican Christmas, the sixth of January.

Way back before working illegal aliens became against the law, quite a number of hands voluntarily deported themselves in August, especially if livestock were doing good enough to allow time to build fence. Deflecting flint rock with a crowbar tends to cause deep homesickness in the 100 degree August sun. Took me about 20 summers before I learned to shift the job chart to fit the economic needs of the cowboys.

President Fox says he favors a legal program to send workers to the U.S. We need his support. And it may be possible, as he owns a ranch and wears boots to work. Critics claim he doesn't have an economic plan. They probably don't realize how many notes he has written down in his tally book or scratched on the saddle house wall in marking chalk. Like the rest of us, he'll have to book his winter feed in the fall, be sure he has enough bulls to breed his cows, and then he'll be able to set about writing a budget before the December inauguration. (County agents were the first offices to advise ranchers over here to keep written records. Maybe we could do a lend lease deal on county agents until Mr. Fox learned to stop writing down counts on his gloves or his chap pocket.)

In time, we'll know how long voting takes in July compared to, say, seeing about sick grandmothers and sick sisters. I've been out of contact so long I may need a refresher. But I would suppose if you knew the price of "three X beer" extrapolated by the number of dollars per month salary, you'd find the amount of days needed to cast a ballot in Acuna, Coahuilla.

July 13, 2000

At the friends of the library sale last year in San Angelo, patrons lined up in front of the high school annex half an hour before opening. The people were not the bookish looking group portrayed in plays and movies. Typical of the urban influence in San Angelo, lots of men wore baseball caps and the women chose workout clothes. (Pink and lime aerobic exercise suits, not housework clothes. Most likely had an apron been unfurled, it would have broken up the crowd into a stampede that'd make an Italian soccer mob seem as orderly as the line at Miss Daisy's dance school.)

A youngster wearing a baseball cap backwards stood in front of me. At first, I was talking to the back of a head, thinking he had the bill pulled over a bearded face. We came in contact when he pointed out I was standing on his long shoelaces, trailing from untied white shoes. He was going to buy books for his mother, he said. Her preference being mystery writers, ones a bit hard to find. Plus, as he said, the dollar price on hardbacks and 50 cents on paperbacks made the sale a good time to stock up on a year's supply.

His reaction to my book list was the first indication of the evening how far I was locked in time. His nods of affirmation were shallow indeed, bare dips of the chin to the likes of John Steinbeck or E.B. White. I should have tried harder to fake a response to his mother's choices, but I wasn't sure whether reading was so much out of style that he was using his mother as a front to buy books for himself.

Once the doors opened, we rushed in to tables lined with books that would never be so neat again. At a buck a throw, one lap around the fiction table cost $6. Paperbacks were in pasteboard boxes on the floor, lined against the wall. Probably by accident, the boxes were close enough together for bifocals to scan one and half boxes at a time. Score me about four books or $2 for every 10 linear feet of paperbacks. If I had a copy at the ranch, I bought an extra for the office, or for my grandson.

On the third round, I paused and looked up. Three ladies and myself controlled the fiction table. Across the whole room, there were only two familiar faces. Old writers like Elmer Kelton and Ross McSwain weren't over scooping up bargains of the Western genre as they always had before. The kid waved from the mystery table. He was doing a thorough job reviewing his mother's books beforehand.

Pressure was off for the next session. My first selections were mainly new hardback editions the library had been sent as samples and chosen not to place in their stacks. Better not ask why your choice of a brand new 20 some-odd dollar book ends up unopened in a dollar sale. Best defense is to remember that F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby" didn't sell at all until after his death — his penniless death, I must add.

So on the next session I paged through library books marked DISCARD in blotched rude letters in the front leaf. Such a travesty to sentence these fine works to oblivion because of broken spines and stained covers. Just because the book was coming apart, the works didn't deserve to be junked. Why not use the money from this sale for tape and glue, was what I thought. Furthermore, we don't drum librarians out of the stacks because they are becoming frayed and faded.

Some of the authors of those tattered books had spoken at writers' conferences and workshops I'd attended. All slants-wise in a row stood a copy of John Casey's sea story, "Spartina," in the same dismal shape as a book having ridden out a stay in a sea bag. John Casey suffers the handicap of stuttering, yet he writes as smoothly as a maple syrup tap fills a bucket. "Gol darn," I stormed to no one, "John, I'll spend a buck to keep your hard work from ending up in a trash dump."

The windup left one woman competing for the whole table. The worst part was leaving bargains behind. At home that night, I leafed through my treasures. The discards hadn't been checked out since 1947. No wonder the lad hunting mystery books looked so bewildered at my choices of writers ...

July 20, 2000

The frontier ended in the shortgrass country as the sons and daughters of the pioneers died off in the 50s and 60s, leaving only a fragment of the descendents that live to this very day. Up until their demise, the scene around San Angelo hotel lobbies and auction barns filled every day with booted and hatted gents ready to trade horses, match horse races, or combine an afternoon playing cards or dominoes with matching events for the next day.

The Big Boss and his cronies led the pack of these second-generation sons of the settlers. All fashioned themselves to be sports — big sports. If interest in running horses waned, they'd leave the dance to go outside and pick a winner in a Bermuda grass mat, free-fall wrestling match.

All the little outposts, in fact, were eager to back their man against one from the next town. At one dance at a country club out west, the fight lasted so long it had to be called a draw. Both men had stained and torn white suits. The supporters from Eldorado popped out five 10-dollar bills and said, "Take this, man, and buy you a new suit of clothes." Not to be outdone, the Big Boss and his pal, Austin Millspaugh, pressed a handful of bills in their man's hand, and said: "Take this, stud, to buy you the best suit of clothes in San Angelo."

The story and the dance didn't end there. Hours later on the way back to the ranch close to daylight, the Big Boss shut off his Ford and demanded his money back from his friend. His friend told me he asked the Boss why he gave him the money in the first place if he was gonna' take it back. The Boss replied, "By gawd, stud, you didn't want 'Aus' and me to look like bad sports in front of those Eldorado boys."

But it wasn't just the Boss; it was the times of big trades and big operators on lambs and calves. There were plenty of cowboys, and black guys to cook for the men on the ranches during roundups. Lots of color reigned in the barbershops in San Angelo and all the adjoining towns. One white-headed barber over on Concho Street kept sloe gin in his tonic bottle. Late on a Saturday, he'd be waving his straight razor over his customers' faces like a maestro sweeping air with his baton.

Just a little later, Ace Reid began to formalize the characters into his gifted work. Ace was the only guy around having enough nerve to tease bankers. The Big Drouth at mid-century made even the bravest wags nervous around jugkeepers. Sometimes an old boy would walk out of the bank after holding his hat in his hand for so long that he'd be halfway back to the ranch before he noticed how much the crown was interfering with the steering wheel.

The other night at a party in San Angelo, I asked a newspaper editor if anybody worked at the paper who'd make a good story, or give a start to make up a story. He just shook his head.

When we sat down to dinner, I had a chance to ask a dean and a professor out at Angelo State University if anybody on the faculty was a distinct and different personality, or perhaps a free thinker. The dean thought a couple of guys in one department he refused to name were a bit different than the rest of the staff. The professor sitting next to him whispered something, but I couldn't catch what was wrong with those two guys. "But on the whole," the dean said, "we can't take chances of being incorrect, or we'll have a lawsuit on our hands."

I also asked the group if they knew any ministers, doctors or lawyers who stood out around town. Again, no one knew of a single soul who would make the start of a good story, much less make a whole story. I'd hoped the editor might have a reporter who owned a jungle cat and had to be told to take a bath when he worked in the office, or perhaps the dean knew a professor who tripped on his shoelaces and spilled oatmeal on his neckties. But I didn't receive any tips or encouragement.

Well, I've given up. I should have known when my mother stopped reading McCalls' magazine and started watching "The Half Baked Dead" soap opera after lunch that man's imagination was coming to an end. I can't keep making up stuff forever. I don't know what I'll do when my grandkids come this summer. Looks like someone in San Angelo would break the rules, even if it were just crossing the street on a green light ...

July 27, 2000

Last year one of my sister's college roommates came back from her editor's job in New York to visit. She edits Home magazine for the Conde Nast publishing group, and travels over wide scopes of the world studying homes and homemaking. One thing she noted in a talk at luncheon was that the new designs in homes are eliminating the dining room and reducing the importance of the kitchen.

For several years, the trend has been to use cabinets and drain boards for kids to store cookies to go with their milk and parents to mix the dog and cat's food. Franchise pizza and fried chicken had to be unwrapped on the counter top. But in the main part, after the Pop Tarts were soaked in the breakfast cereal bowls in the morning, kitchens were a handy placed to leave notes and the children's lunch money.

Women having to go to work outside the home was the main reason families started eating in restaurants so much. Also, women grow tired of cooking before men become tired of eating. But an old gal tearing home from her job to hit a concession stand at the soccer game on a slim margin of time before a piano recital can't be blamed for not cooking a sit-down meal for a household home only long enough to mess up the bathrooms.

The ones of us who do still cook can pass on recipes in big bundles, but we don't have the recipe for how to buy all the high school students a car and a cell phone, staying home baking Betty Crocker devil's food cakes. The front porch of the Mertzon house faces the high school parking lot. Students roar by the house in new pickups and sleek sports cars, fueled on buck-forty a gallon gas, and steered by the immortal nerve of the young. On the cool autumn mornings, I sit and watch this revolving motorcade halt at the first bell, wondering how many hours parents work to pay for the scene.

However, back to cooking: the tip-off on how much a person likes to cook is how much that person worries about how much mess the preparation takes, so now is one test. I am going to tell how to prepare Portuguese sauce the way a mining engineer in Musquiz, Coahuilla passed the recipe on to an old cook at the Victory Club in Piedras Negras. I learned by watching him cook on a huge wood stove flaming with mesquite wood that smoked up the room and darkened his mood. His apron looked like a blacksmith's. A red bandana had slipped over his bad eye. He set the butter in the skillet on fire for effect. I'm sure I was the first gringo to ever enter his kitchen.

Portuguese sauce is made to go on broiled chicken or fried corn tortillas. In its true form, a brown sauce goes over the chicken or the tortillas first, the Portuguese sauce is added next, then a garnish of black olives complete the presentation. The brown sauce prepared correctly is too rich. Prepared incorrectly, only cucumbers and black pepper sausage can match the gastric disruptions of the failed flour lumps and the floating grease suspending a skim of chili powder. (I try to be forthright, but I invariably understate my feelings).

But here is the way the old hombre in the Victory Club and I devised the recipe: sauté one large chopped onion and two cloves of garlic in two tablespoons of butter in a soup pot until wilted, not browned. Peel six of the best tomatoes available. Don't buy the slick-skinned sawdust variety and don't think about the cost. I am trying to teach you to cook, not how to be thrifty. Add the tomatoes cut in wedges to the onion and garlic to simmer. Next, season with two small cans of chopped roasted Ortega peppers, two teaspoons of comino seeds and two boullion cubes. Start adding grated longhorn-style cheddar cheese until the sauce thickens to where you're barely able to pour it. The cheese must be real cheese and not the artificial, phony stuff. Read the labels to be sure the cheese is not that travesty to man's palate that is pawned off in salad bars as cheese when it is not as flavorful or nutritious as Elmer's glue. (I did better in this paragraph at expressing my feelings, don't you think?)

The offer if off if you use jalapenos, margarine, or tomato paste. It's your choice whether the sauce is added to chicken or tortillas. I've served it for supper on Christmas since 1960. But I thought I had better pass it around before my bandana starts slipping over my good eye.

August 3, 2000

A small irrigated valley and Spring Creek divide the two townsites of Mertzon and Sherwood. Mertzon leans heavily toward juniper cedars and massive liveoaks; Sherwood is shaded by huge pecans and oaks mixed with hackberry trees spotted among vines and shrubs growing from roots going back into the gardens of the late 19th century.

Of the two sites, Sherwood holds a big edge for shady roads and such monuments as an old cut stone courthouse and a scattering of houses built before 1900. Connecting the courthouse and the homesteads to the original settlers of the town paints more of an image of a Southern town instead of a Southwestern one. So Sherwood is history and an oasis in a region too close to the desert.

One abandoned house took on the aura of one of William Faulkner's Mississippi stories. Not a grand place, but the white fish scales under the eaves, the scroll design of the yard fence, the oval glass front door, in a setting of wild grape vines hanging from pecan limbs set the mind's eye to see one of Mr. Faulkner's characters opening the green screen door.

In the 1960s the lady who lived there had a quilting frame in her parlor. She patched blue jeans and might have taken in ironing. She wore her hair in a thin tight plait rolled in a gray-blue bun. The kitchen always smelled of baking powder biscuits and fried salt pork. Her husband saw spooks high up in the pecan trees. On moonlight nights, he'd blast the shadows with .22 long rifle bullets. Made things hot for the creatures he saw in his troubled mind. When I'd come by to pick up my boys' patched pants, he'd screw up his red face, close one eye and say, "Noelke, last night I shot at a tree-full of Mexicans right up (pointing) there."

After the boys stopped wearing out the knees in their jeans, I lost contact with the couple. Kept meaning to take photographs of her quilting frame and cane back rocking chair; however, by the time I returned, a grandson was guarding the place armed with a .22 pistol and the house was empty.

In the spring an artist came out for a tour of Mertzon and Sherwood to look for old houses before the leafing of the trees covered the scene. We found four or five prospects in each town. Shadows were changing by the lowering sun by the time we reached the old night hunter's house. The backyard looked the same as a wood lot from a northeastern scene. Thick vines covered the front. There was a long yellow snakeskin on the porch. Gray webs and chalk white spider eggs clung to the half-closed screen door.

On the artist's second trip to see the effect of leafing, the Texas Department of Transportation had been on a tree butchering spree along the road in front of the house that'd make General Sherman's march to the sea look like a minor pruning of the countryside. Where shadows cast soft images before, bare stumps stood among wide slash marks and drooping limbs.

First reaction was to wish the spook-hunting grandfather and his pistol-packing grandson were around to see how far the Highway Department had trespassed over the property lines. The next reaction was to wonder how long man and his chainsaws were going to be turning the only shady spot to the west of San Angelo into an open plain.

After seeing the extent of the damage, I changed courses and drove down to the Arden crossing on the river. The West Texas Utilities company had beat the Highway Department to those trees. The power company had cut deep V-shaped notches in pecan trees 150 years old. Shaken, I began to peer at the rings exposed on a 24-inch diameter pecan tree, now three feet of stump.

Tracing my fingers across the circle, not knowing any more than the stump how to tell time by the rings, I muttered, "Here in the center a squirrel must have planted a nut in the rich river loam. And this ring must be where you became big enough to shade the farmer and his horse plowing his field. And this crooked line must be the one where the legislature granted the power companies dominion over the air space and gave the Highway Department the right to kill trees."

Nightfall caught me on the way back across the river. Next morning, a lawyer assured me the Highway Department and the utilities Company have the right to down the trees in their rights-of-way. I noticed yesterday on a walk in Mertzon that the town banker has a 10-foot windmill wheel mounted close to one of the power lines. He better stay on guard, or the utility company or the Highway Department will be trimming the windmill's sails.

August 10, 2000

The big hollow-horn association, The Texas and Southwestern Cattleman's, published a survey in their journal last month showing the average age of the members to be 58.5 years. About a third of us herders were 65 or older, and less than 5 percent were below 35 years of age.

Just those figures brought all kinds of complications to mind. Looked as if the young men were going to have plenty of country to lease in the next decade. Unclear, however, was how many graybeards were going to leave widows, or how old the widows were going to be at the expiration of the spouse. It's pretty easy to figure without running another poll that any woman who had been married to a rancher in the past two decades of a serious labor shortage wasn't going to keep ranching, or keep marrying ranchers.

The poll further showed only six percent of the members were females. I don't know whether the wives were left out because they normally may have two other careers, like teaching school and keeping house, or because they preferred to be anonymous in case they had to duck out from an over-eager loan company.

Remember in the old shipwreck movies how the women boarded the lifeboats, and it was "Ol' Cap," the glory-struck old fool, who went down with the ship? This isn't saying women haven't been courageous. They have faced down all sorts of adversities all over the ranch country. However, my family history proves my Greatest of Great Grandmothers was afraid of Comanche war parties. One winter in the 1860s, when the Indians were on the warpath, she moved her family from the ranch over to officers' quarters at Fort Concho. Normally she wasn't that flighty, but I suppose she had to face shooting her sawed-off shotgun and packing a new baby on her hip at the same time.

Next quandary was how many young people are going into agriculture in New Zealand and Australia, our country's alternate food source and primary nemesis for domestic agriculture? Might be a way of taking a bank shot at our country in our own behalf by dropping a hint that we have only caught the "Aussies" once adding dingo dog to ground meat. For consumers to keep in mind, a touch of wild flavor improves the taste of hamburger. Further, that Oriental palates put great store in canine recipes.

A French sheep farmer recently caused a stir nationwide by objecting to McDonalds serving Brazilian beef in his country. True, the hide off a South American cow brute is about as tender as her loin, but they might let us know if they were going to add aardvark or anteater meat to their product. Argentine labels on canned corned beef make vague references to the contents. Those cowboys eat their old horses, but that's not like slipping wild dog meat into the grinders.

Takes the human system a lot of time to become adjusted to eating horsemeat or drinking mare's milk. Much more than the slight behavior changes from eating dingo-related products, like growling on moonlight nights and sudden urges to scratch. Twenty years ago, I drank fresh mare's milk in Lower Mongolia. My right ear still flicks forward in a horse corral. And it's all I can do sometimes on crowded dance floors to keep from kicking when another dancer bumps me from behind.

The poll didn't address the prospect of any of us retiring. Jose, the cowboy who worked for us for more than 40 years, made the mistake of deciding he and I were the same age. Jose began watching me pulling up in the saddle like I was climbing a loose rope ladder, until he figured he was in the same shape and quit over 10 years ago. Too bad he took me for an example, and didn't notice his boot heel still cleared the dance floor 12 inches every time they called a polka at the Cuarto Caminos. But once again I was a bad influence on the man I wanted to help so much.

I think every year about going back to conventions and reunions to check on the fraternity of hollow horns and woolies. The other day at the grocery store, I ran across a man who lived at my grandfather's Bentley line camp in 1923. He was waiting for the paperwork on a trip to England. If he was worried about the attrition of herders he was sure keeping up a good front. I wish I had asked him if he filled in the Cattleman's questionnaire. Be a big help in lowering the average age to weed out the retired ones …

August 17, 2000

In Texas, 129 municipalities admit to facing water shortages from the drouth. The state's reservoirs are down 33 percent, at their lowest levels in 23 years. Our governor is off campaigning for president. The legislature is out until the first of the year. City and county governments stay preoccupied studying growth potential. And the folks who are aware they are hooked into failing systems are left to wonder what morning they are going awaken to hear the kitchen faucets sucking air.

In June, I called the water department in San Angelo to check the city's water supply. It's risky for nearby small towns and adjacent landowners for a big city to run short of water. All kinds of spooky stories were circulating on such hombres as the oil magnate, Boone Pickens, buying water rights up on the Plains to sell to the highest urban bidder, or the heirs of the Shanghai Pierce ranch selling the underground water rights for 12 million bucks.

We already knew the Wool Capital had enough savvy to buy water rights, as they owned 26 sections' worth on the old Rollie White ranch close to Brady. Furthermore, the city's car washes and putting greens alone used enough water to drain Spring Creek and dry up Mertzon.

Once I reached the right official, he listed the five lakes as Nasworthy, Three Rivers, North Concho, Spence and Ivie. "Levels," he said, "are sufficient to last the city two and a half years without more rainfall." He went on to say that by pumping (salty) water from Lake Spence on the Colorado River this summer and blending the water from Lake Ivie and adding the water from the 10 city wells in McCulloch County, the city had a good reserve.

Satisfied, I wandered off on other subjects until the daily newspaper in San Angelo reported that a friend of mine on the city council had passed a motion to make selling water outside the city limits illegal. Water truckers and the poor souls out of water east of Angelo reacted in an uproar, making my pal as popular as the drouth. The ban offended me. I drink a pint of Angelo water every time I'm in town. No tonic dispensed by man makes the hair glisten like a good drenching with the city's chlorine recipe.

The whole mess put a big test on our friendship, especially in public. He was the wrong kind of guy to support in a high-wired political situation, as he had too much courage and principle to back down at the right time. Also, he knew about water shortages. His family's ranch seven miles west of Angelo and depends on wells so weak a flight of blackbirds will knock the head off the aquifer. Didn't make sense he'd sponsor a bill cutting off selling water to rural folks unless the city didn't have any water to spare.

The problem came to a head when my busybody sister invited the councilman to speak to her luncheon group in San Angelo. I shot off a hot E-mail advising her that if she was going have him come to not sit between him and the back door in case of a terrorist attack. Too, not to expect me to come to town to hear a guy speak who was hotter than the noon temperature on the sidewalks of Amarillo and Lubbock put together.

She replied that if I chose to be known as "a two-faced coward" she'd cover up the family's shame as much as possible. As poor as her charge fit, I went on into Angelo and plopped down by my pal like I thought he was going to be the next mayor and serve out his council term as mayor pro-tem.

The facts on the water shortage changed, however, once he spoke. Here is part of what he told the group about the water situation in San Angelo: "The city needs 15 to 20,000 acre-feet of water a year. The 36-inch pipe purchased to run the line from the Rollie White wells was sold. Even if the pipeline is run up to Lake Ivie at one million dollars a mile, a court judgement won by a water district limits production to 1500 acre-feet a year until 2006, when the limit escalates to a meager 2750 acre-feet. The well water is further problematic," he said, "because of EPA objections of the radium content."

Things didn't get better: "San Angelo has rights to a limited percentage of the water in Lake Spence. Repairing salt water damage to the pipeline and pumps from Spence is going to take 60 days," he continued. "The pool in Three Rivers Lake caught floodwater last month, however the level is too low to pump into the water station at Lake Nasworthy. I try to tell everyone I can about the judgement against the White water rights. In an emergency, I suppose, we could truck water from the wells."

Sure puts us outlanders in big danger of water prospecting. Pretty clear now why San Angelo doesn't have water to sell. Sidekicks who overvalue the truth are dangerous partners in a fight. Be just like my sister to turn the guest list in to the newspaper.

August 24, 2000

Before I checked into the hospital in San Angelo in July, the last time was June of 1928 as a newborn infant. The exact dismissal date of that stay is clouded by time and record — a blank spot, so to speak. Delay in recording my birth and convincing mother to go home complicates the facts. She refused to accept that she had a red-headed boy instead of the blue-eyed, blond-haired girl her heart was set on.

The Catholic sisters she had as nurses were unable to console her. As a precaution against jumping ship, she became the first mother registered in the hospital to be required to wear an identification bracelet. I remember the bracelet part well, as a cowboy at the ranch cut mine loose when it began to impede the circulation to my hand.

Years passed before I investigated the mystery of the time of my birth. One hospital birth certificate reads, "Boy baby, 8 June 1928, Tom Green County." Other records show vague references to: "Boy baby, 17 June, 1928." A strange affidavit signed by a family member swears he was present at the birth of a boy baby on the third week of June 1928 and visited said child in 1930 at St. John's hospital. Mother refused to talk.

A cowboy told me after I started to school that he knew the crows didn't hatch me, because he was pretty sure my mother broke all records for staying in the hospital for childbirth. Might be imagination, but I think she told her bridge club I was an orphan.

Whatever the time between hospital confinements, it was long enough for a deep-seated phobia to develop. "Terror" is a better word than phobia. After I had advised the doctors and nurses that the only reason I wasn't hyperventilating was because my body was in such a state of shock that the nerve tips were curling up like a sea horse's tail, I saw they weren't interested in treating cowardice. (Reader's Digest reported years ago that holding your breath or holding in your stomach causes the nerve tips to curl. Further, that holding in the stomach endangers collapse of the rib cage upon exhaling.)

The surgeon was forewarned that treating me was like bringing in a terrified savage from the banks of the Amazon that'd never been strapped on a stainless steel table to be gassed under bright lights. I knew enough about hospitals to know I didn't want to be knocked out in a place so full of germs that the help was wearing face masks and rubber gloves.

The operation was scheduled to begin at 8:30 on a Monday. In what a lady called "a slight change in time," the waiting and apprehension portion of the ordeal was prolonged to three in the afternoon. Four of my sons and a friend stayed by my side. After the 14th hour passed without nourishment or liquids, I reminded my supporters that in our tenacious bloodlines our greatest of great grandfathers had once trailed and shot an Indian horse thief at the exact location of the hospital. Before the story finished, nurses jerked off the four blankets warming my nervous chill for a ride into what was to become "the Great Darkness."

Hours later, severe hiccups awakened me from weird slumber in a blue-ceiling room. In one sequence, I was a two year-old playing on a rock wall behind St. John's, the hospital of my birth. In the next, two Catholic sisters were holding me up by my hind legs, pounding my back, trying to force me to spit up 10 rosary beads (one decade of Hail Mary's) I'd swallowed.

Spasms from the hiccups rocked the IV stand and shook the TV monitor off the bed. (Today's medicine treats hiccups using the old "hair of the dog" remedy. The kitchen rushes up leftover broccoli soup or cauliflower casserole to the sufferer.) In a fuzzy frame, I told my friend that I understood now why I felt at home on the St. John's grounds. Much later, she said I mumbled, "I didn't mean to swallow the prayer beads. I want to go home."

Sometime in the grassy haze, a nurse stuck a thermometer in my ear without realizing a sponge rubber earplug was there to drown the noise. Had not my son Ben stopped her, she was headed for the telephone to report 101 degrees of fever to the doctor. Once I regained consciousness, I saw that unless I wanted a deep ear operation, the earplugs had better be saved for hotel rooms.

Weeks later, I am still being waited on at home. Doctors' orders restrict lifting anything over 25 pounds, which is 13 pounds more than I can lift. But maybe I will recover stronger than before. I've learned the language of the sick. Covered in books and comfort, I report daily that I am "weak as a kitten," because I know full well how the pastureland feels in 103-degree heat.

August 31, 2000

In the division of my Grandfather Noelke's estate, the Goat Whiskers' outfit drew one of the best cowboys in the country, Cecil Parks. Cecil worked for the family from 1933 until his death in 1986. The Big Boss claimed he was the best horse tuner to come on the ranch. Put another way, he came from a school of mounted men who tracked and captured what they gathered and didn't spill them at the first gate.

Cecil and his wife lived at the Whiskers' line camp north of the highway. In those days, Goat Whiskers the Elder worked all the pastures south of the highway in a set of cow corrals 11 inches deep in powdered dirt bedded in dried thin residue. Strutting peacocks and chattering guinea hens blocked the outside gates. Lucky indeed was the cowboy who could ride off on the north side with Cecil for a last look from a high point at the swirling dust from the corrals at the headquarters.

After Goat Whiskers the Younger took charge, my sons worked there during the summer months. The main vocation was crowbars and shovels; however, on a couple of summers, John, the middle boy, lucked into a saddlehorn job instead of lining up postholes. Part of the time, he helped Cecil. About all the help Cecil ever needed was to put yearling cattle or yearling ewes across the highway, or maybe round up brushy pastures bigger than 2000 acres.

Being such a loner, the way of all camp men, Whiskers was surprised how often Cecil started asking John and another kid called "Yellowstone" to come over to gather the bulls, or doctor sheep. (Cecil named one "Juan" and the other "Yellowstone.") Later on, much later on, after John was off to college, we'd be over at the Whiskers' outfit working and Cecil always asked, "When's ol' Juan coming back to help us?"

Took several roundups to understand, but I caught on one wet fall when we drove Young Whiskers' lambs over to the railroad to ship. They drifted along, grazing the new fall grass into a light east headwind, jumping to the side now and then from a shadow cast across the trail. We were out of range of the peacocks and guineas. The lady cooking was always on time wherever we were at noon. If we had a care, we'd have had to make it up. While I was down on foot walking out a stiff lamb, Cecil rode over on my drive. Without an opening, he said, "Monte, why ain't 'old Juan' coming back where he belongs?" He turned and rode back on his side of the herd without waiting for my reply. I saw then for the first time that he couldn't imagine a boy giving up a chance to be a cowboy.

It all came back the other day in a story about the musician Dave Bruebeck. His daddy wanted him to be a cowboy, but his mother insisted he go to college. Watching Mr. Bruebeck playing a piano on the stage, flicking across the keyboard, it's obvious he'd have been a good roper. A fellow that coordinated could have recoiled and had another loop in the air while an ordinary hand was pulling up his slack.

No telling how many more good prospects twisted off and went to college. To name a couple, Paul Patterson, who taught English in high school to the likes of Elmer Kelton, threw away a promising career on the Shannon ranch breaking outlawed horses for $30 a month to go to the University. Russell Drake, who wrote for this paper and the The Wall Street Journal, quit an outfit out at Kent, Texas, so western they used a team and wagon to put out salt as late as 1950, to go to journalism school. The only exiles who ever came back to the ranch were the ones who had a relapse and temporarily became unsound of mind.

My son, John, must have had a spell up in Connecticut last year when he bought an old unlined Porter saddle 2300 miles from his dun horse at Mertzon. I ran a test to see how close he was to becoming a dude. Relining a saddle in Connecticut takes a six-month waiting period and costs twice as much as it does in Texas. So I sent him a black rubber pad, guaranteed to slip out from under the saddle all winter and gall a horse's back in the summer.

He must still have some sense, as he hasn't thanked me yet for that crawling piece of heating pad. Porter Saddlery has been out of business a long time. But that doesn't mean the "Juans" and the "Yellowstones" might not fall for buying a memento to make a link to a long ago past as a cowboy. I bet if there was any way of getting the truth from them, ol' Dave Bruebeck, Paul Patterson and Russell Drake wish they'd stayed cowboys.

September 7, 2000

Water well drillers in Shortgrass Country claim to be six months behind on orders for new wells. An article in the daily paper in San Angelo blamed the backlog on wells drying up from the drouth and the precarious water reserves in the cities and outposts.

So far only one well on the ranch has pumped air interspersed with mud. It was drilled before World War One and was once the supply for a household and three pastures heavily stocked with cattle, so the failure of such an oldtimer was traumatic.

In the drouth of the Fifties, all of the wells on dry Spring Creek Draw going through the old ranch had to be deepened. Rickety cable tool rigs thumped away at tinhorn casing lining holes going back to my grandfather's time, caving in about as much filling to the bottom of the well as they gained in a day.

Added to the drama were the horseback men driving livestock away from the rig to the dwindling supplies of other waterings. An old galvanized tank mounted on a wagon pulled by a team of mules kept the headquarters in kitchen water once that well failed. Needless to say, tension around the house peaked in the middle of the hot, parched days when water had to be heated on the stove to wash the dishes and rinse the ever-full pail of diapers.

The water department over at Mertzon revived those long-ago memories last month. Desperate for an additional source, the city drilled a test hole six miles from town, right off the north property line of the old ranch and close to the big draw. After the well failed to pass under steady pumping, the head of the water works came by the house in Mertzon. Insulted that he hadn't asked my opinion before, I directed my reply toward 92 years of ranching history on the big draw, including a sidelight that my first home was 400 yards from his drill site, making the water superintendent's total test time 25 instead of 24 hours.

Now and then a crisis arises where a graybeard or a granny's experience might save making the same mistake twice. I never can remember to use it, but the trick is to wait for someone to ask for your advice. Always seems like consultants are short on consultees. I learned too late that I should have been going to audience school instead of speech class.

In the news story on the area well drillers' overloaded schedules, mention was made of an increase of demand by town ranchers and vacation home owners wanting backup wells in case the municipal water supply worsened. Strong water sands are going to have to be struck to meet those customers' needs. Three minutes of tooth brushing can take six gallons of water if the lavatory faucet is left running; an automatic dishwasher uses 18 gallons in a cycle.

Also, city folks have to be gradually converted to well water. Used to splashing in chlorine concoctions in tubs and pools, flavored with the odor of the deck of a fishing boat, they keep running the shower trying to make it smell right. Years ago an article in Reader's Digest Magazine explained that the reason all city water has fishy odor is an ammonia compound (amine) added for health protection. It's been a long time since I read the article over at my mother's house, but I think the reaction of the ammonia released chloroform, among other things, explaining the dopey behavior city folks display from taking too many baths. One big advantage of highly aromatic formulas is that the ones of us who can't hear water dripping in the house can at least smell the trouble.

Every time a rig passes through Mertzon going back to Angelo, another customer can be checked off the waiting list. Mother should have kept her old copies of Reader's Digest. Then I'd know the percentage of chloroform in the city folks' bath water ...

September 14, 2000

The distance between the city folks and the outlanders is infinite. Rarely does either side have an opportunity to examine themselves, much less understand each other. As long as I have been around the hollow horn and woolie fraternity, I find myself at meetings staring from the back row at the weather-burned necks and the bleached hatband lines above the ears, wondering what drives this determined breed of men to fight such overwhelming odds.

In the cities, I further lose myself watching the strange human forms ballooned into gym pants, bound in wrinkled tee shirts, and shod in run-over blue and white walking shoes laced with red-speckled strings. In parks, I go off course gazing at scantily clad joggers huffing and puffing up the trail, accompanied by big woolly-faced wolfhounds, or long-legged brindle greyhounds. Often I miss my floor on hotel elevators, stunned by the sight of the dinner crowd going out dressed as if off to a skating rink or a bowling alley.

Last month at a dinner theater given by Angelo State University, I looked over the crowd and realized it'd been 40 years since any man wore a seersucker suit and plaid bow tie like mine to a summer affair in West Texas. Other than the college lads, who expect antiquity in centurions (all adults over 40), the rest of the crowd must have thought I was part of the cast, a performer who was going to do a soft-shoe number, twirling a straw boater hat on a walking stick decorated by a red polkadot streamer.

The clincher came next week at the principal grocer's on the south side of San Angelo. Filling a big list, preplanned to pack the perishables in an ice chest to reach the ranch in the heat wave, I nearly missed seeing an old friend from a ranch north of town. She wheeled her cart over without coming to a stop and asked, "Don't you just hate to come to Angelo in all this heat? George (her husband) won't even come in the store. I warned him the car was going to heat up from running the air conditioner." And off she went without ever stopping to mention the drouth or the water shortage.

For the rest of the shopping trip, I watched for another ranch couple. The score on the back of the yellow tablet for grocery lists showed I'd recognized three ranchers at the store since May. George and his wife, Alice, made five. More than five people were riding the handicap carts at any given moment the store was open. Alice had made me realize we might be out of place living in the country.

The population of the wool capital is 96,000 citizens. From where the county road leaves Highway 67 going to the ranch for the next 25 miles, there are seven of us living on ranches. To make a 7 a.m. lab test or 8 a.m. appointment, we have to arise early enough to feed the horses and drive 600 blocks to Angelo. (To convert miles to blocks, multiply the miles by 10. Expedites communication with city folks.) The amount of time it takes to explain this to a 20 year-old receptionist is so tedious it often negates the results of the test and makes the appointment more critical.

Were the seven of us living on or close to the Divide able to pick up the support of 100 or so citizens living in Barnhart or Ozona, we might form a wedge thick enough to reform the Angelo healers and tooth grinders' sense of time and place. After the weather cools, (and we are hoping to have autumn since we missed having spring,) we need to meet and organize. Ranchers and rural folks aren't prone to being joiners, but lately there's been a good response to joining the Mr. Sam's club, so we may be becoming more gregarious.

Nevertheless, it is going to be slow going to bring the neighbors together. Alfredo over on the Brooks' ranch goes out the back way to shop in Eldorado. The neighbors down on the railroad track do a lot of mail order business. Folks west of the ranch split their trade between Ozona and Angelo. However, as hard as the drouth has been on our health, we are probably all going to be hitting the medical centers in San Angelo this winter.

Be nice to be understood somewhere. The opening of the new century promises to be a casual age. If it doesn't swing back soon, my old seersucker suit may not make another decade. But were I down to my last threads, I'd still like to spend an evening every once in awhile at a dressed-up affair, even if it is a town where we are outnumbered 96 thousand to seven…

September 21, 2000

The operation in July took five weeks to recover from. Mertzon was my choice for confinement, to be close to the post Office and the bank, as part of the restrictions were not to drive an automobile. Each week one of my sons or daughters-in-law came to relieve a friend, who was doing all the grocery shopping and supervising the necessary household tasks.

After being home a few days, I was able to walk two miles in the morning coolness. At that hour, town dogs are asleep from the exertions of howling all night, so there's no danger from that quarter. The few mutts that were active shied away from my path. Most likely, they were overdue at home from a night's prowl of flushing range chickens, or perhaps running sheep on the irrigated farms across the river. But just in case a watchdog overstepped his responsibility, I wore a Boy Scout whistle around my neck for protection. (I learned in such abundant cur territory as Mexico and Central America that a blast from a whistle will halt all except the most savage breeds. At least, a whistle offers a chance of summoning help.)

Once the walk ended, my breakfast was served off a tray on the front porch. Only unhandy part of sitting on the front porch was that the coffeepot was in the kitchen. Sometimes I'd have to wait 10 minutes for a second cup. By then the rice cereal softened into a messy mush of bananas and milk. Two or three times, the wait was so long, I considered blowing a few blasts on the whistle. But a story restrained me.

Years ago, an old coot of a dentist in San Angelo took to his bed at an early age from a strange illness brought on by a simple gall bladder operation.

You see, his poor wife nursed him day and night. Her parents bought the groceries and paid the bills. At first, he was content to stay in a bed placed in the downstairs parlor, but sensing the convenience of his location, he demanded to be moved upstairs. By then, moving him was no easy task. Under the luxury of his long convalescence, he weighed over 250 pounds. Further, the bed frame was antique oak and required three strong men to maneuver up the stairs.

Once situated upstairs, he demanded his mother's copper dinner bell to summon his wife or her aged mother to wait on him. Acoustics in the high ceilings of the house added resonance to the clanging dinner bell. The missus tried to take in boarders to supplement her income; however, the incessant ringing so disturbed the diners that the idea failed.

Stricken by the cacophony, her only companion, a Collie dog, stayed under the house and refused to come out until nightfall. Children fled from the premises, maddened by the bell. A yellow canary, a prince of a singer, molted in her cage, until one morning she dropped dead from a wretched collapse of her voice box. Members of the Missionary Society stopped coming; new ministers came for one visit and never returned.

The poor lady seemed doomed to suffer the same fate as her canary. But one Sunday after demanding the choicest pieces of a large filleted catfish, plus all of the fried roe, her patient choked on a fish bone and died alone upstairs in his bed, or that was the attending physician's report on the death certificate.

Listed in the inventory of his modest estate was an unusual entry: "one copper dinner bell, no clapper, thus no value." The widow, so it was told, lived a long, happy life, comforted by her Collie dog and nourished by her favorite food, fried catfish.

Sitting alone on the front porch, I fingered the whistle. Nurses and family start out eager to aid the sick and the ailing, yet as the cases wear on, patience thins.

"Whistles hold a pea that might turn deadly if swallowed in a cup of coffee," I thought. After reviewing the story, I became a model patient, willing to wait and be waited upon. Old Doc's bell clapper, by the way, must have rolled into a crack in the floor, as it was never recovered.

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October 5, 2000