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 . . .
One thing about cold: it drives folks indoors. But in some cases, it also can provide entertainment, enlightenment, laughter and education. We’re not talking your local PBS station, here, but Alphonse “Windy” Wilson.
This time of year, . . .
Herb tried on the Santa suit this morning. Couldn’t button the middle button on the jacket, but fortunately the pants had a drawstring that made allowances for yet another year of good living and fine food. To fix the unclosed button situation, . . .
There is a secret selfish longing we all share this time of year. It is traditional to give gifts at Christmas, of course, but there’s always the chance that those who adore us for our sterling qualities won’t give us what we really want . . .
My first wife came from a ranching family way back up in the hills and had a cousin, Ted, who was a hounddog man.
I talked my way into hunting with him, of course.
All went well until we were on the way home, when a badger ran across the road . . .
There were two little boys down at the Doughnut Hole Café the other day, standing outside, just waiting. They didn’t have long to wait. The Greyhound bus pulls up just about one each afternoon, give or take a little.
When the bus pulled up and . . .
The evening was one of those that come back to you time after time, year after long year. It comes back and whispers of how good life can be when you’re well fed, enjoying life, and a good friend shares the front porch with you on a summer’s . . .
Sure was good to see Jimmy back from the Middle East last week. He looks good in that uniform, too. He was running all over the place for a few days, visiting everyone he knows, but he finally came in to the Mule Barn and sat at the philosophy counter, . . .
A building project (for those of us who are carpenterially challenged) can be a confusing nightmare of little whatchits we never learned the name of and have no idea how to use.
Oh, if we need a two by four that’s eight feet long, we’re . . .
September means pencils, books and teacher’s dirty looks for the youngsters, but it also means state fair season. That’s when the world’s largest zucchini squash is at its prime, of course. The farm animals are all shed off and shiny . . .
You have to hand it to Windy. When Alphonse “Windy” Wilson chooses to speak, it is a bombastic sampling of creativity. Windy has yet to find a word he can’t make better through his own unique methods.
Well, what got him fired up the . . .
“Sanctimonious siphons, it’s hot!” said Dud, sitting at the philosophy counter and turning over his coffee cup for action with a single smooth move. Dud is a regular at the Mule Barn truck stop’s legendary world dilemma think . . .
“Bert looks good this morning, Doc,” Dud said, quietly. Three stools down the counter, Bert smiled and said, “Yes, I certainly do!”
We turned toward our old pal. “You heard that?”
“Sure did, guys,” . . .
“From the cow to the plow, Dewey,” Windy said, leaning on a shovel. Windy Wilson was on another of his “helper days” and today it was Dewey Decker’s turn to be helped.
“What do you mean, Windy?”
“You know . . .
The annual Fourth of July picnic was a celebration of time and freedom. We’d all watched the parade, earlier, because that’s what you do on the Fourth, and we believe in it.
Our parade features Scout troops in uniform, the high school band, . . .
Those of us who call this little valley home have a unique blessing in the form of Perry, our dentist. Yes, when we go to get the fangs fixed up at O’Dontall Dental, down in the old brick building near the office of the Valley Weekly Miracle, . . .