Open season on winter warmth
Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

Julie Carter

Since winter seems to be just around the corner, the subject of "meatier women" has frequently begun creeping into the cowboys' vocabulary.

It has to be a throwback gene to the cave man days and the survival of the guy with the "warmest" wife.

Dan the team roper is reminding his friends that he lives alone and has an old, drafty trailer house which is conducive to, and an incentive for, snuggling for winter survival. He is clear that, under those circumstances, the anorexic-type woman is completely out of the question.

With all his good friends, you are sure to know they will fix him up better than he could ever have imagined.

One idea was that he troll the buffet lines in town for the love of his life, but that scared him speechless when a photo preview was included with the email suggestion.

Another offered herself up with the caveat of considerable age, an extremely accurate cowboy B.S. detector and a large cast iron skillet.

Dan thought it might be OK, but she had to bring her own microwave. You ll recall he recently blew his up in the tater tot explosion.

Not long ago, Dan's ole buddy Donnie called him and said he was moving back to the area. Dan began recalling "the best of Donnie" stories.

Dan and Donnie were working on a ranch, but not living there. In money-saving mode, Donnie rode a Moped to and from his job.

A Great Dane on the route liked to chase the motor-scooter cowboy.

One morning, Donnie came limping into work, somewhat bloodied up. "You know, I have no idea if that Great Dane is still in the ditch underneath that Moped," he said.

At lunch, they took a ranch truck down to the crash site and sorted everything out. Dog 1, Moped 0. Donnie got a truck.

Donnie invited everybody over to eat one night. He was going to cook it up himself. The gang showed up and he handed them each a bowl teeming with unidentified ingredients. Someone finally asked. Ranch Style Beans and tuna fish.

When he called, Donnie told Dan he had been shopping in the horse trading magazines because as soon as he moved back, he wanted to take up roping again with Dan and his pals.

He said, as he understands horse ads, there are two categories, "He's a good'un," and "He has a world of potential."

"Don't want none of them potential ones, that sounds like work," Donnie said. When Dan asked him if he was looking for heading or heeling horse, Donnie said it didn't matter, he had decided to get the cheapest "he s a good 'un" he could find.

Dan reminded him that he never was very good at roping and Donnie's response was, "Don't matter. I'm mostly in it for the beer drinkin' . I figure six or eight 12-packs and I'll have this team roping thing down."

When Dan asked Donnie how many times he'd been married, he said, "Four and half."

"How do you figure to have been married a half a time?" Dan asked.

"Well," Donnie explained, "I've been married four times in a church building. Then one time I got drunk in Oklahoma and had some sort of Indian ceremony with a fat woman. I might have been getting married then."

Likely, it was close to winter when that happened. Wonder if she had a microwave? Dan, perhaps, could give her a call.