Good stories and bad knees
Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

Julie Carter

Cowboys, while being rugged individualists, have at least three things in common: a competitive spirit, the love of a good story and bad knees.

The knees are often the result of that aggressive nature and the stories most assuredly are.

One can quickly spot the cowboys without bad knees. As a rule, they are still attending high school classes. Through the years, their path can be traced through a number of orthopedic offices, culminating in the bionic replacement of body parts in later years.

That is where the stories come in.

The gimping cowboy will willingly impart the story about that sun fishing son-of-a-gun that finally got the best of him and busted up that knee.

A few of the more honest ones will admit to the limp originating with a football injury, even if that sometimes meant he fell out of the stands while watching.

Others will confess to less cowboy-like activities such as water or snow skiing or even a friendly game of Budweiser-fueled volleyball at a family reunion.

Cowboys with a horse- or cow-related limp will scoff at those embarrassing injuries and say with disdain, "It serves them right."

One particular cowboy I know has cured the limp he acquired as a young cowboy and subsequently nursed all through his adult years as a cattleman. Then he became a cowboy again and took to team roping full time. The only benefit he can get from his limp now is bragging rights to the story.

He was day-working his way through college gathering cattle in the South Texas brasada. On the day of the legendary injury, he was assigned with a corrida of vaqueros to gather a bunch of snaky brush cattle.

They had spent the long, hot day in brush that consisted mostly of stickers and close-quartered oak and mesquite trees. Just as the cattle were finally gathered up and headed to the pens, one of the bulls decided he'd rather be where he had been rather than where he was.

The cowboy of this story and one other got the signal to go bring him back. The race was on. Both horses were fast and both men were hard riders. The brush was heavy and the bull thought his tail was on fire.

Our cowboy was in the lead to rope when the bull cut between two fair-size oaks. He calculated he had the one on the left cleared, shifted in the saddle to miss the one on the right.

The bull, the horse or the tree moved, it was never determined exactly which, and the cowboy hit the oak square on his knee. Of course, this happened as he was traveling at approximately the speed of light.

Nothing to say except "Dang, that will hurt a feller."

After the knee healed up as good as it was ever going to, what hurt the most for a long time was that the other cowboy got to rope the bull. However, the now-gimpy cowboy had a wild tale he could tell for years.

That almost made up for the bad knee.

Almost, except on cold mornings, long days in the saddle, long drives and worse yet, when there was no one around to hear the tale.

For more stories, visit Julie’s website at www.julie-carter.com

The Farmer's Rooster

From Email

John the farmer was in the fertilized egg business. He had several hundred young layers (hens), called 'pullets', and ten roosters, whose job it was to fertilize the eggs.

The farmer kept records and any rooster that didn't perform went into the soup pot and was replaced. That took an awful lot of his time, so he bought a set of tiny bells and attached them to his roosters. Each bell had a different tone so John could tell from a distance, which rooster was performing. Now he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report simply by listening to the bells.

The farmer's favorite rooster was old Butch, a very fine specimen he was, too. But on this particular morning John noticed old Butch's bell hadn't rung at all! John went to investigate. The other roosters were chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing. The pullets, hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover.

But to Farmer John's amazement, old Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn't ring. He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one. John was so proud of old Butch, he entered him in the Renfrew County Fair and he became an overnight sensation among the judges.

The result...The judges not only awarded old Butch the No Bell Piece Prize but they awarded him the Pulletsurprise as well.

Clearly old Butch was a politician in the making: who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most highly coveted awards on our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the populace and screwing them when they weren't paying attention.

Vote carefully this year...the bells are not always audible.

Quote

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."

- P.J. O'Rourke.