The Contract

 

Malpais

The Contract

A Shared Penny, or … $375,000

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

  

            Robert Shufelt, better known across a big swath of country as “Shoofly”, is known for his pencil depictions of the modern-day, southwestern cowboy and his ranch lifestyle. Several cowboys will forever be memorialized in Bob’s work as will some classy, albeit now long deceased Bar Y horned Hereford cows that gave of themselves selflessly in malpais country that can miraculously convert sparse rain into grass.

            Any combination of those features can only be characterized as tough.

            The center of a large body of his work’s universe can be described as the head of Buckhorn, the headwaters of Blue Creek, Dry Section Mountain, South Pacific, and Sycamore Camp. Every square inch of surface of that grand ranch country is a red relict and largely uneroded volcanic derived rock known in ranch speaking circles as Malpais (pronounced măl’pī).

            It becomes a contradiction of sorts.

It can be wicked stuff. A sizeable portion of horses not raised in it will emerge from a juelte cut and bleeding up through their cannons.

            When it rains, though, it is heaven sent. Nearly every drop of rain falling on it will be caught like a sponge to be converted into warm season grasses as only New Mexico can. When rain has been received in abundance, the green from afar gives it a soft and enchanting appearance. It looks like grass emerging from a rolling carpet.

            In a not so strange way, it is the perfect paradigm representing our nation. It is hard and rough, unforgiving if not managed, but wonderfully resilient and productive if it is understood and treated wisely. Don Thompson once said there is not a land in the world that expects less and gives more than New Mexico, and … a specific area of northwestern Grant County, the once center of Shoofly’s work, is the epitome of that exact comparison.

            A Shared Penny, or … $375,000

            Our nation today isn’t the nation envisioned by the Founders or the Framers. Neither is it the nation that was occupied by the second-generation patriots as witnessed by the Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, who travelled in our country in the 1830’s with the intention of studying the prisons of that time.

            What he observed astounded him.

            He witnessed a respect of law that was unexpected, and, in fact, unique to the world. Even uneducated backwoods Americans viewed themselves as the keepers of the Constitution as shareholders of the ultimate power of the nation. They could read and their Bibles and their Constitution became their central archive of written knowledge.

            The outcome of his American adventure became his book, Democracy in America. What he came to observe, the prisons, took a secondary role, and, in fact, became a last case adjunct to social conformity. The citizenry itself was the real cornerstone of compliance, moderation, and sustainability.

            Their sovereign surroundings included their private property, their community, their state and their nation. Theirs became the byline and it wasn’t on communal and shared possession. It was based on their very presence and their own personal property. They were stockholders of the union, but their authority came with their legal citizenship and their vote. The Constitution was the contract, and the 38 signatories that gathered on September 17, 1787, to sign that document were their official proxy representatives.

That document was a living body of laws nominally and perhaps only secondary to the teachings of … their Bibles.

Our nation today isn’t the nation envisioned by the de Tocqueville study subjects, either.

A clearer picture of that is shared national debt and unfunded liabilities. The citizenry of 1837 shared about one penny each of combined national debt. According to Truth in Accounting, the tyranny of this week in 2021 only gets more insane. Those folks claim the national debt and unfunded liabilities is close to $123 Trillion which converts to about $375,000 per subservient subject. Think about that. One penny in 1837 versus $375,000 in 2021 is the magnitude of the chokehold.

Who among us can view that metric with objectivity? We cannot be free with that debt and that is why the federal government must become an even greater tyrant to service the looming debacle.

How can this cast of political characters even suggest another spending package?

What we can do is individually decide who is actually promulgating the looming third American revolution.  The probability of avoiding the current legislative colossus being bullied through the halls of corruption is likely slim.

The communists are intent, and the obstacle holders are timid and inept.

The Contract

In a defensive posture intended to seek and maintain sanity, the artwork hanging behind my desk draws attention.

One of Shoofly’s two greatest pieces, The Contract, hangs there. It probably has artistic descriptions and esoteric flair of note, but it has cowboy written all over it. That is what matters. Two horsemen are mounted inside a cedar post pen. There is a mix of origin in their dress, their tack, and their various accoutrement. Nothing is quite pure to historic placement other than the subjects being depicted including two broke ranch horses, two cowboys, and the contract being consummated.

The contract is being bound by a handshake.

There is no army of staff members, lobbyists, grifters, or party hacks. There are individuals as the Constitution promised and promoted. They are having to reach, but their hands have clasped, and their solemn intention is being conveyed as it is shared. It is a powerful statement seldom invoked by any medium. Even greater is both the individualism and the partnership(s) that are being defined. It is emotionally immense.

It is another perfect paradigm of our nation as it should be.

 

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “The other inferred work is “The Ladies of the Bar Y’s”. It is a personal trip back to a different and honorable circumstance. Indeed, it is nostalgic and proper words are difficult to arrange.”