I was talking to Okie. He’s the farm dog. He doesn’t care to go out
on the range with the cow dogs. His job is mostly guarding, barking and
putting up a big front. He does it well. I found him under one of the
trucks. He’d dug a little bed in the dirt. It was in the shade. He
seemed to be pondering.
“So,” I asked, “what are ya thinking?”
“School,” he said, “maybe goin’ to college.”
This was a new one. He never seemed to be the studious kind.
“What would you major in?”
“Bones, I guess.”
“An anatomy student?” I questioned, “Archeologist? Musician? Witch doctor? Osteopath?”
“No, I was thinking about becoming a chef. Specialize in bones. You
know, like Col. Sanders specialized in chicken, Wilford Brimley
specialized in oatmeal, and Eve specialized in apples.”
“Have you ever cooked anything?” I asked.
“No, but I’ve eaten a lot of bones,” he said.
“That’s for sure,” I said, remembering the thousands of times a wide
variety of carcass remnants were left tortured and mangled on the porch.
“What kind of menu would you have? I mean, a bone is a bone, right?”
“Oh, you plebeian hominid,” he said, “Not to a bone connoisseur.
That’s like saying a rope is a rope to a cowboy, or a dress is a dress
to a bride, or all road kill is the same to a buzzard. When the only
caviar you have ever eaten is that Powerball fluorescent fish bait, you
have a very limited sense of the bountiful tastes that await you!”
“I guess you’re right,” I conceded, chastened by the breadth of his vision. “Do you actually have to cook the bone?”
“Not just cook the bone!” he said, looking down his nose at me, “It
can be marinated, served au slime rosado, sliced into bone dollars, as
ground bone burgers, served bone tartare with or without gristle and
ligaments, as bone stew flavored by pieces of offal, hair and toenails,
or simply wrapped in a tortilla á la bone burrito.”
“Wow!” I said. “I had no idea.”...
Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
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