I’ve discovered the wonderful world of petty mail-order junk. I love it. A computer is a grand tool for opening the world of spending petty cash for a guy, but it’s not really essential. You can do without one if you just get on the catalog list. . . .
It is the heat that defines us this time of year. Defines our sweaty days with the brassy skies and afternoons that make us clamor for shade. The heat gives us an excuse to make June the biggest beer-drinking month of the year and returns certain words . . .
Delbert’s at it again. You know Delbert McLain, our local chamber of commerce? He’s the guy who wants to bring lots of people here so the place isn’t quite as nice as it is now.
Well, ol’ Delbert zipped into the Mule Barn truck . . .
Doc saw Dewey the other day, supervising as Windy Wilson unloaded a dump truck of manure into a huge bin on a vacant lot.
“I’ll go persecute some more, Dewey,” Windy said, and drove off toward the feedlot.
Well, Doc had to ask.
“It’s . . .
Steve, the tall cowboy of us philosophy types, was riding a young horse through town the other day to get him used to “boogers.”
To gentle a horse, he explained, you give them something to booger at, and then talk them out of it. You keep . . .
“So why do we salute the flag, kids?” said Abraham Lincoln Bahdziewicz.
Woodrow Wilson Bahdziewicz, the oldest of the Bahdziewicz kids, raised his hand.
“Yes, Woody?” said his dad.
“To say thank you for the United . . .
Mabel Adams was out the other day, with her new walker, the one with the basket on it, and a seat for sitting when she gets tired? It’s a purple kind of walker and she likes it. It has hand brakes, too, just like a bicycle. She was headed for . . .
Somehow the snow is a little like Christmas. We can expect it. We can listen to the television weather and expect it. But still, when it comes it’s like a gift a wonderful unwrapped gift, because it is the wrapping.
Doc found it when he turned . . .
For years now, Herb Collins has been helping Santa by donning the red and the beard and the tassels and waving to passing cars on Christmas Eve out at the Old Fort Road crossing. He takes a bag of candy along, in case anyone cares to stop, and he also . . .
There is a nighttime sweetness and hope that hovers over us this time of year here at home. This is a time for summing up and looking ahead … and a time for dreams.
And at night… ah, that’s the time, isn’t it? Outside it’s . . .
Steve will have Thanksgiving dinner over at Doc’s and Mrs. Doc’s this year, and any number of his friends are grateful for that. Steve is one heckuva cowboy and trainer of young colts, and a good friend to all, but he’d never make . . .
It comes to us slowly and delicately, as all beautiful things should. It’s usually in the early morning. We can smell it. We can feel it. That little nip that teases us … autumn. Almost autumn.
Summer is heat and work and sweat and cold . . .
We walked quietly out and looked toward the west. It seems as though everyone did. Neighbors were out and the dogs were racing around trying to set new yard-to-yard speed records. Yes, it was getting dark there in the west.
But no one really wanted . . .
“You seem kinda low this morning, Sweetie,” Marjorie said.
“Business has been kinda slow for a while now, and it’s wedding season,” he said.
Marvin Pincus’ “business” of course, is free love counseling . . .
The focus group broke up after an hour and a half with laughter and full tummies and hugs and handshakes. Dewey got his tie clip caught on Mrs. Doc’s sweater as she hugged him, but that was his only physical disaster and it was a minor one.
As . . .
The problem Marvin Pincus had yesterday was simply time. You see, he’d found that new-to-him but older-anyway deluxe glass Fenwick fly rod at a yard sale and snapped it up. While others had succumbed to the flyweight temptations of graphite, . . .
. . .
Herb walked into O’Dontal Dental the other day, holding his hand against a swollen face. He hadn’t even made an appointment to see Perry first, and it became obvious why he hadn’t.
“Good morning, Herb,” said Andrea, the . . .
Whenever my lack of mechanical prowess threatens to surface, I sure miss the solenoid. It was always there for us, lurking under the hood somewhere, and always – always – it was waiting to malfunction. It was handy, every mechanic knew where it . . .
One of the great pleasures of hanging around down at the livestock auction barn each Saturday morning is being able to take your dog along.
Why do we go to the sales barn? We love agriculture, and it’s part of living here to see who buys what . . .
Daybreak. Coffee.
The Big Two.
There’s something so satisfying about getting out of bed when the world is still dark and quiet and resting. Making the coffee gives us time to scratch and think. Well, scratch, anyway. Most of that . . .
It’s the first Saturday in March, 1973, and more than 40 dog mushers are ready to leave the semi-pro baseball stadium in Anchorage and drive their teams more than 1,100 miles to Nome.
Could they really do it? Well, they did it that year and every . . .
Day started slowly, after Steve and Snort were already through two big pastures and into the birth of the hills. Sure was pretty, too, he noticed. Kinda pink and made everything glow.
“Pretty as a pocketful of baby mouses,” he thought, smiling. . . .
The subject was love, of course, with Valentine’s Day upon us, and that’s why the grizzled and semi-grizzled members of the world dilemma think tank had settled upon it. Well, to be fair, they agreed to talk about someone else’s love . . .
The morning conference began innocently enough, with Steve and Doc arguing over which of the little packaged jellies went better on sourdough toast, and no one caring which one was right.
Dud and Bert and I sat silently, sucking down the morning elixir . . .