I'm not one of those greenies who
believes that humans are a cancerous growth destroying the planet, but
I'll admit it's getting a little too crowded in my neck of the woods.
The old sale yard is gone that had been there so long it became an
archeological dig when they tore it down. There's houses there now where
I took a lot of bids and walked lots of alleys. We've been invaded by a
horde of rich tech gazillionaires who are buying ranches, kicking off
the cows and planting grape vines and olive trees. The sale yard was our
church and our social hall and now that it's gone all us ancient
geezers hardly see each other any more. And I seriously doubt a bunch of
crippled old cowboys are all gonna start going to wine tastings.
I'm
told that the techies like our lifestyle because, "it's stress-free."
HA! Evidently they have never had a calving season where the neighbor's
3,000 pound, double muscled, full French exotic bull broke in and
shacked up with the six-weight heifers for two months. Or lived through a
seven year drouth, have a banker breathing down their neck and have to
sell cows at hamburger prices that they paid $3,000 apiece for last
April.
Nah, there's no stress.
Some
of the newbies are friendly and we welcome them to the neighborhood.
They come to our brandings, we go to theirs and we like them because
they buy great range bulls that breed our cows because no one has fixed
any fence around here since The Great Trich Epidemic of 1973. We are
more than happy to continue this arrangement but eventually they end up
fixing the fence. Either way, we win because they pay for it. And we're
grateful that they've driven up the value of ranch real estate to the
point any 20 acre rundown ranchette is worth a million bucks.
Some
of the newbies are rich snobs who move in and build 20,000 square foot
fortresses so we can't snoop on them. Because they're so secretive we
don't know much about them and this we cannot tolerate. There's a law in
physics that states that any vacuum of information will be filled with
scandalous scuttlebutt. I know from experience that all you have to do
is tell someone in a normal tone of voice in the coffee shop that you
have hemorrhoids and by nightfall everyone in town knows you have brain
cancer.
A filthy rich mysterious
heiress who moved in a few years ago is a good example of how rumors get
started. I heard it from Bill who heard it from Frank that the source
of her money is either from drugs, Microsoft, automobiles, Apple, tires
or oil. Although we may not know exactly where she got her money we do
know she's got a lot of it because she's buying up ranches like cattle
feeders are buying jars of Tums.
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