By Julie Carter
A pretty girl will stop a cowboy in his tracks every time. He will then do and say things he would have taken bets against if you had asked him prior to the pretty girl. This story is one of those times.
Ron was a good cowboy working for a good rancher with plenty of New Mexico country to tend. He was also aware this man had a daughter in an Ivy League college somewhere in the direction of “back East.”
Winter had passed, heifers were about done calving, brandings were on the horizon and summer would soon be here. Life was good.
Then this cowboy’s world turned upside down when Pretty Girl came home for Spring Break.
The celebratory barbeque at the ranch gave Ron a little time to visit with Pretty Girl and he knew right-off she was way out of his social league as she chatted about opera, Broadway openings and formal dinner parties. The closest he could hope for was to hold his own at wine tasting. How hard could it be?
Like most cowboys, Ron liked to help the Colorado folks out with their brewery success and occasionally tried to help out the Kentucky folks with their sour mash business. He knew he was going to have to get some schooling on the finer points of wine tasting.
Cowboys are experts at many things, capable of hard work with cattle, horses, fences, and equipment as well as making the hard business decisions required for a modern ranching operation. What they don’t know, they aren’t afraid to ask from someone who has a few more years and little more experience.
After conferring with a few of the hands in the bunkhouse that night, it was the general consensus an expert was required. Their collective thoughts pointed in the direction of the windmill man who was known to be able to fix anything and tell you a little but about just about everything.
In a phone call to this recommended universal expert, Ron was briefed on vintage, bouquet, body, sediment and all the various attributes of fine wine. The windmill man spoke with such knowledge and authority, the cowboy was duly impressed. He gave a brief pause of curious thought as to where this windmill man might have gotten his knowledge, but was in no position to question it.
It was clear his plan would be to invite Pretty Girl to share a little wine with him next time she was home.
Back to work he went, taking more notice than ever of the possibilities of the ranch. In his daydreams he envisioned Pretty Girl bringing him his supper after a hard day’s work on the ranch he had married. By the time she actually came home again, he was in love.
It was summer and the cowboy invited her on a picnic to a pretty spot on the ranch with wine to be the main feature. They set a date and time and the cowboy whistled his way through his work for several days.
As will happen at a ranch, things didn’t go as planned. He was down to choosing between a trip to town to get the wine or helping a late calving heifer through her ordeal. In a bind, he called the windmill man who agreed to bring him some wine in plenty of time for the big date.
Shined up, washed behind the ears and everything, Ron picked the girl up at the boss’s house and headed down the road to the spot on the creek he liked best. They talked and laughed and the afternoon progressed about as smoothly as he could have hoped.
He might have actually realized his dream of capturing Pretty Girl and the ranch -- if only the windmill man had thought to buy wine in bottle instead of a box.
© Julie Carter 2006
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