One older gentleman waited ‘til the last question had been asked then he approached me and offered his hand. I didn’t catch his name. He was wearin’ thick glasses. He reached into his shirt pocket and handed me a Polaroid snapshot of a cowdog settin’ in the back of an ol’ Chevy pickup. “Go git in the pickup!” he said, an obvious reference to one of my stories. He laughed and wandered off.
A while later I wrote of meetin’
him and of the snapshot. I was tryin’ to explain why I enjoy makin’ up
poems and columns about people in our way of life. That ol’ man, I said,
was the reason I did it.
One day I got a letter from a
lady who had read my story and she said that ol’ man was her dad. He and
I struck up a friendship. We wrote occasional letters. He’d send me
photos of his horse and grandkids. We’d visit on the phone. He’d talk
about the old days. He’d cowboy’d all his life and still helped on local
gathers or checked pastures sometimes. He was in his 80’s.
His health started slippin’, so I
went to see him. We had a good visit. Before I left, he gave me a photo
of Bill Pickett doggin’ a steer. He took it off his kitchen wall. He
claimed he’d seen Bill do his stuff. His wife gave me a wooden hot pad.
She picked it right off the kitchen table and gave it to me.
His wife died. He sorta lost
interest in things. We talked on the phone infrequently. He went into a
nursing home. The last time I called him, he was in and out of reality.
He was ready, he said. He missed his wife terribly. He became
incoherent.
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