A lady librarian had come all the way
from Nova Scotia to meet me and was now standing at the front door of my
house. I have grown accustomed to these visits from fans who enjoy my
primitive writing style. I offered her my autograph but to my surprise
she had come clear across the continent to see my horse, Gentleman. I
have to admit I have have grown accustomed to this also. I did all the
hard work and I ended up making Gentleman famous instead of myself.
As
it turned out the librarian was a member of her local humane society
and thought that, as a result of reading the stories I wrote, that I had
been abusing my horse. She had a tattered copy of a book I’d written a
decade before in her possession that had been out of print for years. I
hadn’t even seen a copy in five years. The book’s cover features a photo
of Gentleman and I and Gentleman appears to be laughing. The lady
librarian was convinced that I had done some evil thing to get him to
pose for the camera like that. “What did you do?” she demanded to know.
“Did you drug him? Put a cold bit in his mouth? Make him eat something
awful like chicken?”
I assured her that I would never do anything that drastic just to sell a few lousy copies of a book.
“Well then what did you do?” she demanded to know.
“The
truth of the matter is,” I replied semi-honestly, “that Gentleman just
likes my brand of humor. I crack him up! He is my best fan and just
loves my funny stories.” I grabbed some recent snapshots of Gentleman
just to prove it. “Here was his reaction to my story about when I
accidentally dropped a bale of hay on my wife, and had to feed by myself
and locked myself out of the truck.”
I
showed her another photo and said, “As you can tell from this picture I
really had him laughing with my story about my expensive duck herding
dog that could herd ducks but not cows.”
At
this point I thought I had proven my point but the librarian wanted to
see Gentleman in person, check his condition and see if I really could
make him laugh. So I loaded her up in the back of the truck and took her
to the ranch.
“Is that him?” she asked.
“No that’s a cow, that is him over there eating the corral down, one board at a time.”
“Oh, he looks even worse than I thought,” said the lady librarian.
I could tell she was disappointed after meeting Gentleman in person. Most of his fans are.
“Well, the time has come for you to prove to me that you can make him laugh,” the Canadian demanded.
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