Horseshoes, Cowsocks & Duckfeet

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Praise

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  Foreword

  INTRODUCTION

  CAJUN DANCE

  A COLD CALL

  AIN’T SEEN NUTHIN’ YET

  WHEN NATURE CALLS

  ONLY EWES CAN PREVENT WILDFIRE

  COWBOY VOCABULARY MISCONCEPTIONS

  COW DISTURBER

  HORSE PEOPLE

  A FAVOR

  COW PSYCHOLOGIST

  MAN’S BEST FRIEND

  MARCH MADNESS

  SIMPLE PROJECTS

  CLOTHESHORSE

  THE TRANQUILIZER GUN

  CARHARTT COWBOY

  COYOTE COWBOY OBSERVATIONS

  JACK’S CREATION KIT

  CAVE PAINTING

  SPRINGTIME FLYING

  CHAMPAGNE FLIGHT

  THE BUTTERFLY WEDDING

  LAKE VALLEY

  DOIN’ THE LAUNDRY

  RANCHERS AND BUZZARDS

  FLYNT AND FRANK

  BEANS À LA BLACK— A RECIPE FOR TROUBLE

  FREE ADVICE

  DRAWING A LINE IN THE DIRT

  HOLLER TAIL

  SPARKLING CONVERSATION

  THE PRODUCER MEETING

  MY KINDA TOWN

  SMALLVILLE GROWING PAINS

  COMING OUT

  THERIOGENOLOGIST

  CAT LAWS

  CHICK-FIL-A

  CHICKEN HOUSE ATTACK

  A CLOSE CALL

  NATURE’S LOGIC

  UNCLE BUCKER’S BABY

  MORMON BOYS

  TALKIN’ DIRTY

  DOG ROLLIN’

  BONNIE AND DAN

  MARGINAL QUOTES

  COWBOY WEDDING

  REAL THING

  THE COWBOY IMAGE

  KEEPIN’ BUSY

  STRONG WORDS

  SUMMER HOME

  SPARE HORSE

  GOLFING DISASTER

  GETTING OUT ALIVE

  A STICKY GIFT

  KIDS

  EDDIE’S BOAT RACE

  WILLIE’S TOTAL EXPERIENCE LOUNGE

  COWDOGS

  SCORPION STRIKES AGAIN

  HOMELESS DOGS

  A POND RUNS THROUGH IT

  VANISHING EAST

  DEAR ANIMAL PLANET

  NEW NEIGHBORS

  JUST SAY NO!

  OL’ ROOKIE’S FLASHBACK

  DOWN TO NO KEYS

  THE ROPIN’ VET

  GEORGE AND ELLIE

  EDSEL’S TRUCK

  JACKSON HOLE FIRES

  HISPANIC AGRICULTURE

  ETHIOPIA, WHY ME?

  FOOD AID TO AFGHANISTAN

  EMPTY PLACES AT THE CHRISTMAS TABLE

  HARDY TREES

  GIMP

  COWHIDE ON THE SOLES OF HIS BOOTS

  TIMED EVENT MAN

  SEMI-TOUGH

  MIDNIGHT AT THE OASIS (BAR)

  JET LAG DIARY

  THE POLO CLUB

  KELLY’S HALLOWEEN

  BRUSH JACKET TESTIMONIAL

  THE COWBOY AND THE ATHLETE

  TWENTY-FIVE THINGS LIKE BEING IN THE CATTLE BUSINESS

  BACK TO NATURE

  THE MOVE

  COWBOY CURSES

  FIFTY WAYS TO FOOL YER BANKER

  ECONOMIST NIGHTMARE

  TOBACCO SUITS

  THE DREADED BLUE BOX

  PETE AT THE ALTAR CALL

  WHALE DILEMMA

  HUNTING CAMP COOK

  WEE THANKSGIVING

  GOAT DAY

  THANKSGIVING

  FREDDY’S TRIAL

  DOZERMAN

  THE BULLRIDER’S LIMP

  HIND SPEAK

  TRY ME

  IS THERE REALLY A SANTA CLAUS?

  PICKUP DREAMS

  THE FORD EX’S

  CLASH OF THE TITANS

  Y2K—NO SWEAT

  2020

  TOXIC COFFEE

  HANDY TOASTS AND TRIBUTES

  UNFINISHED THOUGHTS

  GLOSSARY

  NPR AIR DATES

  ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATORS

  About the Author

  OTHER BOOKS BY BAXTER BLACK

  Copyright Page

  PRAISE FOR BAXTER BLACK

  “He could make a dead man sit up and laugh!”

  —Washington Post Book World

  “If I were asked to name a couple of poets who make a nice steady living off their poetry, the names that would come to my mind are Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Baxter Black.”

  —Calvin Trillin

  “Humorist and poet of the ranch and barnyard, Baxter Black has variously been dubbed a latter-day Will Rogers, the dean of cowboy bards, and the Art Buchwald of the Stetson-and-Levi’s crowd.”

  —Christian Science Monitor

  “Perhaps the most recognizable man in agriculture today is not the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, not the head of the National Cattleman’s Beef Association, not even the point leader in the PRCA. It is, in fact, a mustached former large animal veterinarian and part-time roper who ‘just likes to tell stories.’”

  —TV Hagenah, Ag Journal

  “Bax is a great writer . . . a voice from out there that needs to be heard.”

  —Bob Edwards, NPR

  “He sees things that nobody else sees. He has an imagination that is unparalleled.”

  —Pauline Arrillaga, quoted by Red Stegall, Associated Press

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  WHEN NATURE CALLS. By Don Gill.

  COW PSYCHOLOGIST. By Bob Black.

  THE TRANQUILIZER GUN. By Charlie Marsh.

  CAVE PAINTING. By Dave Holl.

  THE BUTTERFLY WEDDING. By Charlie Marsh.

  HOLLER TAIL. By Don Gill.

  CAT LAWS. By Bob Black.

  REAL THING. By Dave Holl.

  SPARE HORSE. By Don Gill.

  EDDIE’S BOAT RACE. By Bob Black.

  HISPANIC AGRICULTURE. By Dave Holl.

  MIDNIGHT AT THE OASIS (BAR). By Charlie Marsh.

  KELLY’S HALLOWEEN. By Bob Black.

  HUNTING CAMP COOK. By Don Gill.

  DOZERMAN. By Charlie Marsh.

  PICKUP DREAMS. By Dave Holl.

  FOREWORD

  BY HERMAN MELVILLE

  Call me unreliable.

  It is obvious to all who see my name bandied about that I have been busy writing forewords for legitimate books— Genesis (chapter 7), The Perfect Storm, On Golden Pond, The Glossary of Narwhales, and Who Moved My Harpoon?

  My interest in the sea led me to Horseshoes, Cowsocks & Duckfeet. Although I have never heard of this author and have no intention of reading his book, I have always been fascinated by swimming fowl.

  Ever since I saw a gravy boat with a duck top and a bowl bottom, I have been curious what they looked like underwater. And, I confess, this led to my study of what cows looked like below the waterline.

  I participated in a study wherein I donned scuba gear, took my waterproof Kodak, and sank myself in a stock tank. I waited for the cows to come to water. I was rewarded by the submerged view of posty leg-ged cloven hooves and the squared, rhinoceros-looking lips of cattle slurping water.

  As luck would have it, I caught a rare sighting of a watering cowboy who put his palms to the mud and broke the surface with a straining moustache and pursed lips. He rose and fell repeatedly like a lizard doing push-ups on a hot rock. But I diambergress. . . .

  I do think cowboys have a lot in common with obsessed, demented, peg-leg sea captains. Both can get intensely focused on besting unbeatable beasts. We are both prone to tangling in the line, getting lost at sea, and spending time with people who exaggerate.

  I also think the value of a foreword
in a book is highly overrated. Most authors pick someone whose name is recognizable, and this is supposed to lend credibility to the work. I know for a fact the author considered Dave Barry, Salman Rushdie, Zane Grey, Liane Hansen, and Wonder Woman, but none of them would give him the time of day.

  So, since I have a lot of time on my hands and am just doing this for the money, take it for what it’s worth.

  From the Pequod, with love,

  Herman

  INTRODUCTION

  This is my third book for Crown Publishers—a division of Random House, a subsidiary of the word-kicker conglomerate, which is a member of the United Nations and working under the auspices of NASA and the Virgin River Hotel Casino in Mesquite, Nevada.

  How in the world, one might ask, did a former large animal veterinarian living in the wilds of western obscurity get a book published by a real publisher?

  Friends, it is the result of shameless self-confidence, dogged persistence, and shooting arrows into the sky.

  In 1981 I found myself down to no keys. Wallowing in the nadir of a bathyspheric existence—my bad luck had peaked. Broke, single, in debt, I was plumbing the depths of my own survival. Like a lizard trapped in a three-gallon bucket.

  It was there on my personal seafloor that I decided, since I couldn’t sleep, I might as well write a book. I was up anyway. The product of this two-year nocturnal exercise was a novel called Hey Cowboy, Wanna Get Lucky? Being ignorant of the process and optimistic in my innocence, I sent copies of the four-hundred-page manuscript to those writers whose words had clung to the cobwebs in my frontal lobe.

  I admit, the condition of my life at the time rendered my judgment a little skewed. The lucky recipients were Thomas McGuane (Nobody’s Angel), John Nichols (Milagro Beanfield War), Tom Robbins (Still Life with Woodpecker), Dan Jenkins (Baja Oklahoma), and Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas).

  Oddly enough, I had also become enamored with Isaac Bashevis Singer, Edgar Allan Poe, and the book of Isaiah, but I didn’t have their addresses. As I waited anxiously for a response, I learned the fate of unsolicited manuscripts . . . plywood mostly, or insulation. Yet, one arrow struck a receptive heart. Tom Robbins, that master of Technicolor titles, synchronized writing, and profound philosophy, wrote to me. He quoted my lines back to me. He played marimbas on my ventricles. He said, “You need an agent. . . . Take mine!”

  Suffice it to say, my novel was passed around Madison Avenue for a year, got thirty-five rejections, and ended washed up in a box on the shelf in my closet.

  Fast-forward to a new life. I had become a raconteur. Without premeditation or intent, I slid down the slippery slope into entertainment. My veterinary clients were gradually supplanted by others inviting me to speak at their agricultural banquet. I became a road man. Then came a new wife and family, a business publishing and marketing my cowboy poetry books, enough money to buy some cows and a used pickup, and a phone call from my agent in 1992 saying Crown was interested in publishing my self-published volumes of poetry.

  I declined, thinking, “I sell more poetry books than they do.” Not to be deterred, they asked, “Do you have anything else?” The rusty novel, having survived several moves, still sat, in reserve you might say, high in my closet. I retrieved it, dusted off my agent, and it (the book, I mean) sprang to life. Crown published it in 1994, followed by Cactus Tracks & Cowboy Philosophy, a compilation of my National Public Radio commentaries back in 1997.

  I have been writing a weekly column since 1980. It now runs in 130 papers from the Delmarva Farmer to the Pincher Creek Echo, from the Tucson Citizen to the Cascade Horseman, from the Florida Cattlemen’s to the Cabool Enterprise in Cabool, Missouri.

  The column is the essence of what I do, which is to “think up stuff.” I was admonished in an ancient English class to “write about what you know.” My life revolves around animals and the people who care for them; so that’s what I write about. It has been said that it is the truth in humor that makes it funny. I agree, and it certainly explains why there are no science fiction jokes.

  The stories I write assume a life of their own and, like whining children, continue to pester me to make them a part of something bigger. And some do. They become NPR commentaries or greeting cards or eulogies, poetry books, menu backs, bar sermons, refrigerator art, or even get told and retold in my life performances.

  Duckfeet, as we call this book, contains selected tales from the imagination cup that continues to runneth over. They crave attention and this is their chance to shine.

  They are, as I describe them, mostly humorous, occasionally political, and accidentally informative.

  They are biologically correct, PG-rated, and anxious to please, not unlike the author who is still out there shooting arrows into the sky.

  Several years ago I had a job in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It coincided with my first big loss in the stock market. Thank goodness it was still less than my accumulated cattlefeeding losses or the first divorce. I drove west on I-10 to Acadiana to see if Cajuns were real. I got as far north as Fred’s in Mamou and as far south as Cypremort Point on the gulf. I reveled in the culture, wallowed in its strangeness, and was swallowed up by the natives. I forgot Wall Street.

  I have returned often. It is one of the few foreign countries I enjoy visiting.

  CAJUN DANCE

  “Deez gurls ken dance.”

  He was right. I was flat in the middle of a magic place . . . Whiskey River Landing on the levee of the Atchafalaya Swamp in “sout’ Looziana.”

  The floor was givin’ underneath the dancers. The Huval family band was drivin’ Cajun music into every crevice and cranny, every pore and fiber, every pop, tinkle, and nail hole till the room itself seemed to expand under the pressure.

  The slippers glided, stomped, kicked, and clacked. They stood on their toes, rocked on their heels, they moved like water skippers on the top of a chocolate swamp. Pausing, sliding, setting, pirouetting, leaping from a starting block, braking to a smooth stop, heaving to boatlike against a floating pier.

  Then off again into the blur of circling bare legs, boot tops, and bon temps all in perfect rhythm to the beating of the bayou heart.

  I have lived a fairly long time. I have been places. I have seen bears mate, boats sink, and Gila monsters scurry. I have danced till I couldn’t stand up and stood up till I couldn’t dance. I’ve eaten bugs, broccoli, and things that crawl on the seafloor. I have seen as far back as Mayan temples, as far away as Betelgeuse, and as deep down as Tom Robbins. I have been on Johnny Carson, the cover of USA Today, and fed the snakes at the Dixie Chicken.

  I have held things in my hand that will be here a million years beyond my own existence.

  Yet, on that dance floor, I felt a ripple in the universe, a time warp moment when the often unspectacular human race threw its head back and howled at the moon.

  Thank you, Napoleon; thank you, Canadiens; and thank you, Shirley Cormier and the all-girl Cajun band. It was a crawfish crabmeat carousel, a seafood boudin Creole belle, an Acadian accordian, heavy water gumbo étouffée, Spanish moss jambalaya, and a Tabasco Popsicle where you suck the head and eat the tail.

  My gosh, you can say it again: “Deez gurls ken dance.”

  It is difficult to find, except in academic circles, practicing veterinarians who have lost their humility. I think it is because of the company we keep. Animals are not respecters of good looks, intelligence, prestigious honors, or fashion sense.

  They remind us regularly of our real place in the food chain.

  A COLD CALL

  Through rain or sleet or snow or hail, the vet’s on call to . . . pull it or push it or stop it or start it or pump it or bump it, to hose it or nose it, to stay the course till wellness doth prevail.

  It was a cold winter in southern Michigan: –3°. Dr. Lynn the veterinarian got the call after supper from a good client. Their four horses had illegally gained entrance to the tack room and eaten 150 pounds of grain.

  She drove out to the
magnificently refurbished, snow-covered countryside horse farm of the couple, a pair of upscale twenty-something Internet millionaires. The three crunched their way back to the rustic, unimproved forty-year-old barn where the horses were now in various poses of drooling gastric distress.

  A quick auscultation showed no intestinal movement and membranes the color of strawberry-grape Popsicle tongue. Lynn began her work under the one lightbulb. There was no door, but at –3°, who cares. The Banamine was as thick as Miracle Whip, her stomach hose was as rigid as PVC pipe, and her hand stuck to the stainless steel pump. It was so cold her shadow cracked when she stepped on it.

  She pumped her patients’ stomachs with Epsom salts and mineral oil. One of the horses, however, did not respond. She instructed the couple to walk the horses while she went up to the house to call the surgeon at the vet school. (Even her cell phone had frozen and would only dial odd numbers.)

  As she stepped through the back door of the main house, she remembered that the couple had a pair of Akitas named Whiskey and Bear. Surely the dogs aren’t loose in the house, Lynn thought, or they would have said something. She dialed the phone on the kitchen wall. As it was ringing, she heard the click-click-click of toenails on the hardwood floor. Around the corner came a massive beast big as a Ford tractor. His sled dog ruff stood straight up on his neck. The curled tail never moved and the gaze was level. “Good dog, Whiskey, good dog . . . I’m just borrowing the phone here. . . .”

  Dogs often remember their vet the way children remember their dentist. Whiskey sniffed Lynn’s leg.

  “Good dog . . . oh, yes, I’d like to speak to—YEOW!”

  The au pair staying with the young millionaires heard a screaming clatter. She stepped around the door to be met by Whiskey dragging the good doctor down the hallway by a Carhartt leg, her arms flailing, trailing stethoscope, gloves, stocking cap, syringes, and steamed-up glasses like chum from a trawler. They were stopped when the phone cord came tight.

  “Let the nice vet go, Whiskey,” the au pair said in a Scandinavian accent. “She’s only trying to help.”

  The difference between city and country can be as gray as a country-pop crossover hit or as black and white as five-buckle overshoes versus tasseled loafers. But when the twain shall meet, you can hear the rubbing of cultural tectonic plates.

  AIN’T SEEN NUTHIN’ YET