I heard the rumor down at the feed store, later in the afternoon. We had a real live Sherlock Holmes in our community, and he was our local barber, Curtis Naismith.
“What do you mean?” I asked Julie, the stout girl hired to carry 100-pound . . .
When the Rafter E branded recently, a bunch of us went out to help. It’s a badge of pride to have worked your way up the branding ladder.
As a kid, you flank the calves; you grab them, throw them and hold them down. This is conducive to abrasions, . . .
Emily’s dilemma was obvious: how do you sell manure? Since she fell in love with Dewey Decker, she could think of nothing less than spending her life with him and embracing the fertilizer business whole hog, so to speak. Emily Stickles has never . . .
It occurred to me the other day just what a blessing it is to be a grandfather. The children think we’re all powerful, a fount of knowledge and wisdom. Then they turn three …
We could all use coot lessons.
Yes, the enigmatic old coot in every . . .
Do you feel that itch coming on? It’s time, you know. See the kids out flying kites? That’s a sign. See little green bladelets in the lawn. That’s a sign, too.
It’s almost full spring, and that itch tells us it’s time to . . .
“I believe I’ll write some Celtic music,” said Dud one morning at the world dilemma think tank down at the coffee shop. “I’ve been studying it.”
“I didn’t know you were Celtic,” Steve said.
“I’m . . .
Mrs. Richardson doesn’t often go to the city, but Ardis saw the ad in the big daily paper for the singles group and which church they used for meetings. Mrs. Richardson got all dolled up, and she didn’t forget to take the “magic” . . .
In the week before Valentine’s Day, Marvin Pincus had two new customers for his (free of charge, of course) love advice and fly-tying consultation services. He tied up a midge for one client, a salmon streamer wrapped in lead for another, and . . .
When Pop Walker sneaked out the kitchen door the other day, it affected all of us. He’s been a resident of the Rest of Your Life retirement home for several years now.
He still remembers who said what during combat in Europe, but has a hard time . . .
“Ahhh! Coffee!” said our resident cowboy, Steve, raising his cup at the philosophy counter.
“Let’s raise our cups to whichever Brazilian came up with this stuff.”
Very slowly Herb Collins stood with his cup of coffee there . . .
“Sometimes it’s good to just walk around slowly and quietly and look and think. This morning was one of those times. I didn’t get mildly out of breath the way Doc wanted me to, but just strolled comfortably.
There was what we still . . .
Albuquerque-based writer and former mule packer Slim Randles will receive The Rounders Award at a reception October 16 at Governor Susana Martinez’s residence in Santa Fe.
Named for the classic novel by Max Evans, The Rounders Award is given by . . .
This is the polished time, the pinnacle of life. This is fall, when everything puts on its best for the world to see, and that makes it special.
The sultry heat of summer has passed, and in its place we have cool mornings when the tiny snap of winter’s . . .
To look at Herb Collins, you wouldn’t think he was like that. A nicer, kinder guy you never met. But for one evening each year … one little slice of time … he’s downright diabolical.
Every small town has one, of course. There . . .
The car pulled up in front of the sign that said, “Fly Tying Love Center.”
Marvin lifted the magnifying lenses above his head and got up from his fly-tying bench and walked to the front room. He looked out the window at the woman . . .
There are some who say Jim Albertson, our school principal, sometimes goes a bit too far, but when asked, they can’t really say why. Ask one of the students at the school about “Mr. A.” and they’ll tell you in a whisper that . . .
The hassled, red-faced man cruising the neighborhood Saturday morning in the pickup truck is good ol’ Bert, of course. It’s a Saturday in late summer, which means only one thing in our part of the country – yard sales. That’s why . . .
“Days like this”, said Doc, “a guy has to get out and get his yard work done early, before it gets too hot.”
“So when does it get too hot for you, Doc?”
“Oh, about three o’clock in the morning. Makes it . . .
Whenever Delbert McLain – our chamber of commerce here – gets a new idea, he generally shows up at the Mule Barn for coffee. He likes to try the ideas out on bonafide members of the world dilemma think tank before springing them on the world.
“What . . .
We all know that someone will find Jenkins’s cabin. Someday. Oh, it’s up there in those hills somewhere. We all know that.
It’s become a friendly object of conjecture and speculation. No one living has seen it, as far as we know. Jenkins . . .
The closed-season school board meeting was called to order half an hour late by its chairman, J. Buckdancer Alcott, because the board members saw Windy Wilson sitting in the audience.
Windy had no children, and he sure as sugar wasn’t a teacher, . . .
“Amazing,” Dud said out at the corrals the other day.
Bill and I looked at him a bit strangely, because there were just two horses in the corral and neither one of them had been amazing since Ronald Reagan moved to Washington.
“What’s . . .
It started out as one of those mid-June, lazy kind of Sunday mornings … the kind where you wish the Valley Weekly Miracle had a Sunday edition just so you could read the funnies. At the Fly Tying Love Center, also known as Marvin and Marjorie . . .
You know, it isn’t always easy being a crossing guard for the kids. It especially isn’t easy when you’re an old crossing guard, and Martin is old. One of these days we’ll find out he discovered fire, I think. This isn’t . . .
The newly-formed love firm of Dewey Decker and Emily Stickles (she of the incredible cheekbones and watchful county eye) began yet another sensation here in the valley.
Ever since Dewey told Emily he was actually in the manure business and not just . . .
It was one of those blissful spring evenings when everything works out just right. Walking head-on to each other were two couples: Randy and Katie holding hands and moving east, and Dewey and Emily walking closely without actually touching, moving . . .
Some of us live nicely without utilities and I’ve even heard of a teenager somewhere who doesn’t have a cell phone. But for Alphonse “Windy” Wilson, it’s quite impossible to live without an audience. There’s more . . .
The garden catalogs start coming out when the snow is too deep to even find dirt. But we don’t care. This is a catalog time of year, a time for making plans and figuring out how to do something even better than we did last year. There in the . . .
Life is kinda like a corrugated, washboard ranch road, I believe. Give anything enough time and experience and warts and scars and grooves will get worn in it. The down times and the up times, and the way they tend to alternate can lead to a corrugation . . .