Brody Turner pushed away from the computer desk. He was aroused and resolved that as soon as the pruning job was done he would be taking care of that. The web site was new to him and was filled with the images that he reveled in. They were all so young and beautiful. “Enough! Get outside and do the job, then you can play!”, his mind’s eye shouted at him.
He left the room and headed outside to the work shed, finding the ladder and the chain saw. He carried the twenty-foot extension ladder to the dying cottonwood tree and leaned the ladder up against a fork of one of its largest bare branches.
He went back, retrieved the chain saw from the work shed and improvised a harness to clip it to since he would need to have his hands free once he started moving among the branches of the tree. Safety first, he told himself as he serviced the chain, tightening it snug to the bar and then clipped the harness rig to the saw. The morning sun had grown warmer and higher in its climb toward the meridian. He had a light sheen of sweat on his forehead.
He climbed up the ladder, steadied himself, and started the saw. He revved the saw's throttle trigger a few times until the saw idled easily, then he started cutting, reaching up to the higher limbs while his energy and muscles were still fresh. He whistled the radio song that had lodged itself in his head earlier at the breakfast table that morning.
It was a Willie Nelson song. Brody liked Willie.
The limbs fell to the ground below, collecting in small piles. The work was moving along fine, a nice steady pace and Brody estimated that he would finish before noon; Mrs. Turner would be pleased.
But then something went very wrong.
Just as he was about to cut off the saw and shift the ladder to another position, the throttle trigger snapped and the saw revved up to a whining full-throttle scream. Brody braced against the ladder, the harness digging into his shoulder uncomfortably, as he tried the chain brake by pushing it forward, but the chain kept churning, the brake bolts would not engage.
He stepped up one rung even as he felt the ladder going sideways out from under him. Panic grabbed him for an instant, but then he pushed the saw up onto the nearest branch and used it as a handhold, and for a moment the screaming saw teetered on the limb and then slipped over on the other side as the ladder fell away from Brody. He held onto the branch by crooking his other arm around the branch and struggled away from the whining saw.
It all happened in one smooth, fluid stream of action, not in discrete moments, but in one continuous flow of time. Brody knew what was going to happen and at that moment he soiled himself.
It is said that at the moment of death the sense of hearing is the last to go.
Brody Turner couldn't really say. The sensation of the shrilly whining chain ripping wildly into his belly was startlingly painless. It eviscerated him, thrashing about inside him, the torque of the engine whipping it about like a frenzied, living thing, reaming him out as if he were a gutted pig hanging in a tree.
He smelled the hot engine spewing oil and gasoline.
Numbness came quickly, and he wasn't sure how or when he let go of the limb with his hand. He was aware of his body whirling around and around, entangled with the pitching saw. He was aware of being whipped about. He actually heard the liquidy sound of himself being flung and splashed. He thought an arm went tumbling away with a swipe of the chain.
He saw sunlight and earth and the trees in the neighbor’s yard and the sunlight and even dark splatters flying through the air; red-purple the color of torn plums. Somewhere in his ravaged belly something visceral separated and pulled loose and fell away. His sight failed.
The whining was vicious and deafening. And then it wasn't so bad. When Brody’s lungs flew out of his mouth, his screaming faded away too.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Things I Talk To My Horse About-Part I-
Some of you reading this are aware that I am a working cowboy pulling a USDA 'tick-rider' contract somewhere in the middle of BFE, or if we're talking in GPS'ese, roughly south of Lajitas, Texas. It can be a lonely sort of job, not a lot of human-to-human contact and probably too much time in saddle for my own good; but, it pays really well and like many of my Compadre I am a loner-type so the job suits me fine, . . . but it does have its drawbacks.
I have begun to carry on provocative and lengthily conversations with a 6-year-old blue roan gelding with a blind eye named Lil'Joe. Lil'Joe is a fine government horse; in fact a fine horse all around and a patient listener. Just the other day I was telling him about this dream I had the night before . . .
In the dream- (and FYI, I hardly ever have dreams) . . . any way, I am in a dark and smokey bar like the one's Kris Kristofferson used to write songs about. It’s a biker bar and the place is full of "bad" bikers, not "good" bikers. These bikers are being exceptionally pig-like toward a purty lil' gal named Tamara. Now Tamara in this dream looks a lot like Jamie Presley from the TV show 'My Name Is Earl' and the bikers are close to dishonoring her by attempting to pull a train on her as she is being forced to lean over a pool table. Did I say that Tamara looks like Jamie Presely, the actress? . . . Anyway, I'm sitting at a corner table watching all this in a real-time dream and after tipping back the last swallow of my Shiner, I stand up, take the container of super-strength pills I keep in the little pocket-in-the-pocket of my Wranglers, which for any ladies reading this are tight fitting Wranglers; so I swallow one, cause that's all you ever need when taking super-strength pills. As the super-strength-pill begins to work its' magic I challenge the baldheaded, tatted-up leader of the biker gang to a arm resslin' match for the honor of sweet lil' ol Tamara. I promptly whip his bald-headed-tatted-up ass and then in quick succession every one of the other bikers, till I face the stereotypical biker gang "runt" who went by the name of Poochie in this dream.
You know the one. . . . skinny, sunken-chested, pocket-protector in his biker vest; wearing the glasses with the broken taped-up ear stem.
At this point the dream begins to slow down like a typically poorly choreographed 'Walker, Texas Ranger' fight sequence; It's just me and Poochie, except that in the background I can hear sweet, lil'ol Tamara saying something about "either use it or lose it.”
I stay focused despite that . . . Anyway, we go at it, locking hands, staring straight into each other’s eyes and then even before we get the go-ahead from the midget bartender . . . (my dreams seem to always include a random midget for some still unexplained reason; I will need to see someone about that lil' ditty no doubt!)- sorry for that lapse, I was saying, we're just about to lock it up, the moment of truth . . . I can feel the surge of super-strength pulsing through my now Popeye-like arm from bicep to iron-band wrist and then . . . Poochie takes a gun out of his pocket and shoots me dead! What in the Sam Hell is up with that?
Super-strength pills my ass!
End of dream. I tried to drift back into it; no luck. Gone like the wind.
Is there meaning to this dream?
Is there a puny biker-dude out there with my name typed into his PDA?
I have not had a good night’s rest since this dream. I'm seriously considering an appointment to see a combination late 60's pop-psychologist slash mescal dealer who runs a little practice out of one of the back rooms of the Santa Elena Cantina just across the river. I hear that he has a way with dream interpretations. I need to do something . . . very . . . tired . . . must . . . get . . . sleep.
Adios,
lc
I have begun to carry on provocative and lengthily conversations with a 6-year-old blue roan gelding with a blind eye named Lil'Joe. Lil'Joe is a fine government horse; in fact a fine horse all around and a patient listener. Just the other day I was telling him about this dream I had the night before . . .
In the dream- (and FYI, I hardly ever have dreams) . . . any way, I am in a dark and smokey bar like the one's Kris Kristofferson used to write songs about. It’s a biker bar and the place is full of "bad" bikers, not "good" bikers. These bikers are being exceptionally pig-like toward a purty lil' gal named Tamara. Now Tamara in this dream looks a lot like Jamie Presley from the TV show 'My Name Is Earl' and the bikers are close to dishonoring her by attempting to pull a train on her as she is being forced to lean over a pool table. Did I say that Tamara looks like Jamie Presely, the actress? . . . Anyway, I'm sitting at a corner table watching all this in a real-time dream and after tipping back the last swallow of my Shiner, I stand up, take the container of super-strength pills I keep in the little pocket-in-the-pocket of my Wranglers, which for any ladies reading this are tight fitting Wranglers; so I swallow one, cause that's all you ever need when taking super-strength pills. As the super-strength-pill begins to work its' magic I challenge the baldheaded, tatted-up leader of the biker gang to a arm resslin' match for the honor of sweet lil' ol Tamara. I promptly whip his bald-headed-tatted-up ass and then in quick succession every one of the other bikers, till I face the stereotypical biker gang "runt" who went by the name of Poochie in this dream.
You know the one. . . . skinny, sunken-chested, pocket-protector in his biker vest; wearing the glasses with the broken taped-up ear stem.
At this point the dream begins to slow down like a typically poorly choreographed 'Walker, Texas Ranger' fight sequence; It's just me and Poochie, except that in the background I can hear sweet, lil'ol Tamara saying something about "either use it or lose it.”
I stay focused despite that . . . Anyway, we go at it, locking hands, staring straight into each other’s eyes and then even before we get the go-ahead from the midget bartender . . . (my dreams seem to always include a random midget for some still unexplained reason; I will need to see someone about that lil' ditty no doubt!)- sorry for that lapse, I was saying, we're just about to lock it up, the moment of truth . . . I can feel the surge of super-strength pulsing through my now Popeye-like arm from bicep to iron-band wrist and then . . . Poochie takes a gun out of his pocket and shoots me dead! What in the Sam Hell is up with that?
Super-strength pills my ass!
End of dream. I tried to drift back into it; no luck. Gone like the wind.
Is there meaning to this dream?
Is there a puny biker-dude out there with my name typed into his PDA?
I have not had a good night’s rest since this dream. I'm seriously considering an appointment to see a combination late 60's pop-psychologist slash mescal dealer who runs a little practice out of one of the back rooms of the Santa Elena Cantina just across the river. I hear that he has a way with dream interpretations. I need to do something . . . very . . . tired . . . must . . . get . . . sleep.
Adios,
lc
Truth Is
TRUTH IS By Clayton A. West
My grandfather was twelve years old when he became a cowboy; pushing two dozen half-wild steers to the stock-pens in Fredricksburg by himself on some stout mustang-cross gelding. It took him three days to move those steers the forty miles through an endless parched landscape of head-high thickets of cat claw and creosote brush interspersed with prickly pear flats and mesquite that covered that part of the fringes of Texas Brush Country. He managed it without a major incident and brought the payoff back home, satisfying my great-grandfathers' question of what kind of cowboy Granddad would become. I began cowboying for my granddad when I was fourteen and could barely manage a single cow more than forty yards, much less forty miles. I improved over time only to the point that Granddad realized that for the sake of all involved, but there ought to be as many pastures as possible situated between any cattle and me.
What I could do well was work horses; my granddad realized that and put me in charge of the remuda strings that we ran for our cowboys and neighboring ranches. For the next fifteen years I broke, finished out and tuned up horses; competed in bareback riding in the TRA circuit rodeos and more jackpots than I should have; and freelanced for the BLM as a mustang wrangler on the Pryor Mountains in Montana and Wyoming.The past fifteen years I have spent soft-breaking working ranch and reining horses. In all that time I have come across a handful of horses that epitomized the bewildered owners phrase " that one there I'm afraid won't amount to much . . . Lil' Sis was one not one of those horses. I met her a couple of years ago when she off loaded from a transport trailer from another ranch located in Wyoming. She had been a wild mustang, captured and then adopted out for ranch work. Little success had been attained and she had made her way here where with many, many, many hours of time in the round pen, then under saddle, she had become perhaps one of the best ranging, tracking horses of any of the horses here at the line-camp. She had her moments; she could sulley up in a heartbeat being led by a new, inexperienced cowboy or ranch hand, or she would disappear for weeks at a time, roaming and unattainable in the huge vastness of the ranches canyons and arroyos, then show back up in the remuda sting as if she had never been gone. I didn't completely understand her, but I grew very fond of her. So this is difficult to recount:
"Hey there Clay, looks like Lil'Sis is back in the remuda and she looks sick with the locoweed."
Those were the words that Junior Baze called out this morning as I was finishing a second cup of coffee. It hit me like cold water down the back of my neck.
Loco weed is bad stuff, ranging far and wide in this part of the state and because of its noxious properties, if a horse grazes it in sufficient quantities it will become addicted to it, refusing any and all other forms of feed.
The plant's chemical components destroy the neurological sensory makeup of the horse. The animal begins a steady and insidious spiral of wasting and dementia that ultimately results in death due to dehydration and malnutrition if it is not caught in time.
I made my way from the picket-line camp to the fenced in horse-trap where the other horses were kept, fed and bedded down. Junior caught up to me, rifle in hand. He had obviously seen enough of her already to have made the decision that a rifle would be necessary.
There she was, standing in the pasture trap. She was blade-thin in the chest, her nose to the horizon, tuning into who knows what. She was hip-shot and trembling like she was cold or scared. Her remuda mates were moving among the flakes of fresh hay that had been thrown to them. She was oblivious to them. It was understood looking at her that she was on the loco weed and had been for quite some time. She was in the final wasting stages and could not be saved. She looked nothing like the robust mare that I saw just last summer; strong, slick-coated and moving with purpose, built like a bulldog and able to run all day at a steady lope.
She had been reduced to a horse-zombie. She'd self-roached her mane by sticking her locoweed addled head through miles of five-strand barbed wire fence attempting to get at the thing she craved. It was long and ragged behind her ears and short-nubbed at her withers. It was sad to look at her and remember the horse she once was. This horse, under the influence of this addictive noxious plant, was struggling to take wobbled steps and tripping over her own feet.
Then she picks her head up out of the hound-dog position she'd been carrying it in since I entered the horse trap. And I remember the horse from last summer and the summer before that, when she came to this ranch as an adopted BLM mustang.
This is the horse, who, while still wild and fearful of any two-legged being, let loose those trepidations, heaved a weary sigh and laid her jaw onto the top of my shoulder in an affirming mustang bonding moment. This is the horse, who would let me pick up all four of her feet, sans halter, out in the middle of the pasture at sunset one day. This is the horse, who, on the third day of round pen work, followed a drag-tired cowboy around and took slices of apple out of his hand, without fear, without question.
This is the horse who never bolted or snorted the first time at the sight, smell or sounds of wild cattle milling all around her.
This is the horse who stood over me, after I hit the ground through no fault of her own, with the most curious look on her face. This is the horse who has overcome more fear than any domestic horse I have ever known, and had just gotten better and better. This horse.
This is the horse who tuned into my soul. This is the horse who has convinced an entire line-camp of cowboys over the course of many miles, many West Texas lightning and thunder storms, many days and nights of lonely trails and travels. And this is the horse who, after the echo of the rifle shot is carried away on the wind, I will be remembering for many years to come.
My grandfather was twelve years old when he became a cowboy; pushing two dozen half-wild steers to the stock-pens in Fredricksburg by himself on some stout mustang-cross gelding. It took him three days to move those steers the forty miles through an endless parched landscape of head-high thickets of cat claw and creosote brush interspersed with prickly pear flats and mesquite that covered that part of the fringes of Texas Brush Country. He managed it without a major incident and brought the payoff back home, satisfying my great-grandfathers' question of what kind of cowboy Granddad would become. I began cowboying for my granddad when I was fourteen and could barely manage a single cow more than forty yards, much less forty miles. I improved over time only to the point that Granddad realized that for the sake of all involved, but there ought to be as many pastures as possible situated between any cattle and me.
What I could do well was work horses; my granddad realized that and put me in charge of the remuda strings that we ran for our cowboys and neighboring ranches. For the next fifteen years I broke, finished out and tuned up horses; competed in bareback riding in the TRA circuit rodeos and more jackpots than I should have; and freelanced for the BLM as a mustang wrangler on the Pryor Mountains in Montana and Wyoming.The past fifteen years I have spent soft-breaking working ranch and reining horses. In all that time I have come across a handful of horses that epitomized the bewildered owners phrase " that one there I'm afraid won't amount to much . . . Lil' Sis was one not one of those horses. I met her a couple of years ago when she off loaded from a transport trailer from another ranch located in Wyoming. She had been a wild mustang, captured and then adopted out for ranch work. Little success had been attained and she had made her way here where with many, many, many hours of time in the round pen, then under saddle, she had become perhaps one of the best ranging, tracking horses of any of the horses here at the line-camp. She had her moments; she could sulley up in a heartbeat being led by a new, inexperienced cowboy or ranch hand, or she would disappear for weeks at a time, roaming and unattainable in the huge vastness of the ranches canyons and arroyos, then show back up in the remuda sting as if she had never been gone. I didn't completely understand her, but I grew very fond of her. So this is difficult to recount:
"Hey there Clay, looks like Lil'Sis is back in the remuda and she looks sick with the locoweed."
Those were the words that Junior Baze called out this morning as I was finishing a second cup of coffee. It hit me like cold water down the back of my neck.
Loco weed is bad stuff, ranging far and wide in this part of the state and because of its noxious properties, if a horse grazes it in sufficient quantities it will become addicted to it, refusing any and all other forms of feed.
The plant's chemical components destroy the neurological sensory makeup of the horse. The animal begins a steady and insidious spiral of wasting and dementia that ultimately results in death due to dehydration and malnutrition if it is not caught in time.
I made my way from the picket-line camp to the fenced in horse-trap where the other horses were kept, fed and bedded down. Junior caught up to me, rifle in hand. He had obviously seen enough of her already to have made the decision that a rifle would be necessary.
There she was, standing in the pasture trap. She was blade-thin in the chest, her nose to the horizon, tuning into who knows what. She was hip-shot and trembling like she was cold or scared. Her remuda mates were moving among the flakes of fresh hay that had been thrown to them. She was oblivious to them. It was understood looking at her that she was on the loco weed and had been for quite some time. She was in the final wasting stages and could not be saved. She looked nothing like the robust mare that I saw just last summer; strong, slick-coated and moving with purpose, built like a bulldog and able to run all day at a steady lope.
She had been reduced to a horse-zombie. She'd self-roached her mane by sticking her locoweed addled head through miles of five-strand barbed wire fence attempting to get at the thing she craved. It was long and ragged behind her ears and short-nubbed at her withers. It was sad to look at her and remember the horse she once was. This horse, under the influence of this addictive noxious plant, was struggling to take wobbled steps and tripping over her own feet.
Then she picks her head up out of the hound-dog position she'd been carrying it in since I entered the horse trap. And I remember the horse from last summer and the summer before that, when she came to this ranch as an adopted BLM mustang.
This is the horse, who, while still wild and fearful of any two-legged being, let loose those trepidations, heaved a weary sigh and laid her jaw onto the top of my shoulder in an affirming mustang bonding moment. This is the horse, who would let me pick up all four of her feet, sans halter, out in the middle of the pasture at sunset one day. This is the horse, who, on the third day of round pen work, followed a drag-tired cowboy around and took slices of apple out of his hand, without fear, without question.
This is the horse who never bolted or snorted the first time at the sight, smell or sounds of wild cattle milling all around her.
This is the horse who stood over me, after I hit the ground through no fault of her own, with the most curious look on her face. This is the horse who has overcome more fear than any domestic horse I have ever known, and had just gotten better and better. This horse.
This is the horse who tuned into my soul. This is the horse who has convinced an entire line-camp of cowboys over the course of many miles, many West Texas lightning and thunder storms, many days and nights of lonely trails and travels. And this is the horse who, after the echo of the rifle shot is carried away on the wind, I will be remembering for many years to come.
Adios Harley Cotton. We Barely Knew You
ADIOS HARLEY COTTON, I HARDLY KNEW YOU
I'm sitting here at one of the back tables of the Santa Elena Cantina, watching a fat, little blonde-haired Mexican kid poke an equally fat but decidedly-less amused scorpion around with a stick and I'm trying to remember what Harley Cotton looked like - and I'm having a difficult time doing that.
It has been two days since Harley's mud-encrusted red roan horse came ambling back into the line camp sans "Big H", as Harley was known to the ranch cowboys and other wild-cattle trackers working the current USDA contract I signed on for.We work the Texas side of the Rio Grande River a few miles outside Lajitas.
Harley and the roan horse had been out for two days, not uncommon in this particular job. But the horse had made it's way back without Harley, who hailed from Thackerville, Oklahoma and had been a USDA contract rider for several years. Harley was a big man, standing just over 6'5" and built like a OU linebacker. He was a quiet fella and he played the guitar and sometimes filled in for the camp cook.
Now, anytime a horse that previously leaves a given location with a rider, then sub sequentially returns without said rider demands a swift response from those aware of this sort of development. Happily, I can say that the other boys here did that very thing; teams on horseback went to backtracking Big H's roan's return to the line-camp, the USDA Inspector who was tagging along on this contract put the word out via his government-issued SAT uplink devices and one of the other ranch hands made the necessary 911 calls to the Sheriff's Department and (their south of the border amigos, the Mexican Federales over there in the State of Coahula); just in case Harley had gotten lost and crossed the Rio Grande without noticing.
Unfortunately as it turns out, Harley wasn't in Old Mexico, although he got close to it.
A state police helicopter spotted him in a switchback canyon less than eight hundred yards from where the Rio snakes its way into a maze of ravines and then meanders back out of this section of greasewood and cactus-filled arroyos on its journey to the Gulf of Mexico.
There had been a series of heavy thunderstorms that had swelled up from the south the afternoon that Harlet lit out and they had rumbled their way north to Ft. Davis before drying up and blowing away. It seems that Harley, had gotten caught up in one of these storms and the resultant flash-flood that followed.
Harley, the horse and a days-old-baby calf had been swept away in the sudden torrent. They found Harley in a tangle of broken cottonwood branches, battered and drowned, with the also equally dead, battered and drowned calf still clutched in his beefy arms.
The horse, being the stronger of the three, had survived.
I wasn't there, but the other boys said that Big H looked peaceful when they found him and the calf, despite the fact that he and the calf had taken a beating in the struggle to escape.
I can't say that I knew Harley "Big H" Cotton very well. We'd say hello to each other on occasion when we passed each other on a ride out, and there was the time we ran into each other here at the Santa Elena Cantina and shared a shot of tequila over a Kristofferson song that was playing on the juke.
I can say that Harley seemed to have a gentle way about him and a quick smile always, but, no, I didn't have a reason to know him or him to know me for that matter. Out of respect for him I'm kind of glad we never reached that point; you come to know someone like that and then, one day they get snatched away from you and everyone else blessed to have known them and you miss them even more.
Know what I mean?
Adios Compadre'
I'm sitting here at one of the back tables of the Santa Elena Cantina, watching a fat, little blonde-haired Mexican kid poke an equally fat but decidedly-less amused scorpion around with a stick and I'm trying to remember what Harley Cotton looked like - and I'm having a difficult time doing that.
It has been two days since Harley's mud-encrusted red roan horse came ambling back into the line camp sans "Big H", as Harley was known to the ranch cowboys and other wild-cattle trackers working the current USDA contract I signed on for.We work the Texas side of the Rio Grande River a few miles outside Lajitas.
Harley and the roan horse had been out for two days, not uncommon in this particular job. But the horse had made it's way back without Harley, who hailed from Thackerville, Oklahoma and had been a USDA contract rider for several years. Harley was a big man, standing just over 6'5" and built like a OU linebacker. He was a quiet fella and he played the guitar and sometimes filled in for the camp cook.
Now, anytime a horse that previously leaves a given location with a rider, then sub sequentially returns without said rider demands a swift response from those aware of this sort of development. Happily, I can say that the other boys here did that very thing; teams on horseback went to backtracking Big H's roan's return to the line-camp, the USDA Inspector who was tagging along on this contract put the word out via his government-issued SAT uplink devices and one of the other ranch hands made the necessary 911 calls to the Sheriff's Department and (their south of the border amigos, the Mexican Federales over there in the State of Coahula); just in case Harley had gotten lost and crossed the Rio Grande without noticing.
Unfortunately as it turns out, Harley wasn't in Old Mexico, although he got close to it.
A state police helicopter spotted him in a switchback canyon less than eight hundred yards from where the Rio snakes its way into a maze of ravines and then meanders back out of this section of greasewood and cactus-filled arroyos on its journey to the Gulf of Mexico.
There had been a series of heavy thunderstorms that had swelled up from the south the afternoon that Harlet lit out and they had rumbled their way north to Ft. Davis before drying up and blowing away. It seems that Harley, had gotten caught up in one of these storms and the resultant flash-flood that followed.
Harley, the horse and a days-old-baby calf had been swept away in the sudden torrent. They found Harley in a tangle of broken cottonwood branches, battered and drowned, with the also equally dead, battered and drowned calf still clutched in his beefy arms.
The horse, being the stronger of the three, had survived.
I wasn't there, but the other boys said that Big H looked peaceful when they found him and the calf, despite the fact that he and the calf had taken a beating in the struggle to escape.
I can't say that I knew Harley "Big H" Cotton very well. We'd say hello to each other on occasion when we passed each other on a ride out, and there was the time we ran into each other here at the Santa Elena Cantina and shared a shot of tequila over a Kristofferson song that was playing on the juke.
I can say that Harley seemed to have a gentle way about him and a quick smile always, but, no, I didn't have a reason to know him or him to know me for that matter. Out of respect for him I'm kind of glad we never reached that point; you come to know someone like that and then, one day they get snatched away from you and everyone else blessed to have known them and you miss them even more.
Know what I mean?
Adios Compadre'
Monday, March 12, 2007
My table in the back at the Santa Elena Cantina
I walked into this place about two years ago when I needed a place to get away from the rest of the world that existed just across the Rio Grande River from Lajitas , Texas where I was working a riding permit contract for a rancher out of Marathon, Texas.
It seemed like the right thing to do at the right time. I have not been disappointed since.
The Santa Elena Cantina is owned jointly by two gay fellas who once took one of the river rafting trips that are so popular down this way. They wound up getting hopelessly lost on the Mexico side and if they had not been fortunate enough to crossed paths with a old mexican man named Santos, they would still be lost and presumed missing by their friends back in San Marcos, Texas. They had originally been partners in the business sense in a thriving antiques store. They are now border-town cantina owners.
They emptied their respective bank accounts of disposable cash holdings and bought this place from a man in Monterrey for the sum of $2500.00 U.S. Dollars and completely refurbished it in what they proudly and fondly refer to as Southwestern Art Deco. In my humble and relatively ensconced Texas Hill Country opinion, they have one or two too many paintings of naked Mexican gals and Vegas Elvis paintings on velvet for my liking. But its a cool place to come to and enjoy welcome respite from the heat, listen to Kristofferson or John Prine or Dwight Yoakum on their Wurlitzer Jukebox that they had shipped all the way from some roadhouse in Louisiana. Also they serve Shinerbock beer in buckets of ice. How could I not appreciate a place that makes Shiner Beer available to its patrons.
Like I said before, I have not been disappointed since the first afternoon I walked in to the place.
The Santa Elena Cantina is where I can reflect on my life as a cowboy, of the places and people that I have come to know, of the women I've lost in love and hear songs that remind me of those women. It's also where I do some of my best thinking outside the confines of my saddle, which also provides me a place to retrospect and consider my life and how much time I have left before my cowboy riding slips away.
For readers here, the Santa Elena Cantina will be a place to find a story, hopefully an entertaining story that maybe can be carried with them on their journeys. It may or may not work out for every reader, but the doors open here, the beer is cold, my table in the back always ahs a chair you can side up to and you're always welcome to visit.
Thanks for stopping by and don't be bashful about sharing a spot her in the back again soon.
thelostcowboy
It seemed like the right thing to do at the right time. I have not been disappointed since.
The Santa Elena Cantina is owned jointly by two gay fellas who once took one of the river rafting trips that are so popular down this way. They wound up getting hopelessly lost on the Mexico side and if they had not been fortunate enough to crossed paths with a old mexican man named Santos, they would still be lost and presumed missing by their friends back in San Marcos, Texas. They had originally been partners in the business sense in a thriving antiques store. They are now border-town cantina owners.
They emptied their respective bank accounts of disposable cash holdings and bought this place from a man in Monterrey for the sum of $2500.00 U.S. Dollars and completely refurbished it in what they proudly and fondly refer to as Southwestern Art Deco. In my humble and relatively ensconced Texas Hill Country opinion, they have one or two too many paintings of naked Mexican gals and Vegas Elvis paintings on velvet for my liking. But its a cool place to come to and enjoy welcome respite from the heat, listen to Kristofferson or John Prine or Dwight Yoakum on their Wurlitzer Jukebox that they had shipped all the way from some roadhouse in Louisiana. Also they serve Shinerbock beer in buckets of ice. How could I not appreciate a place that makes Shiner Beer available to its patrons.
Like I said before, I have not been disappointed since the first afternoon I walked in to the place.
The Santa Elena Cantina is where I can reflect on my life as a cowboy, of the places and people that I have come to know, of the women I've lost in love and hear songs that remind me of those women. It's also where I do some of my best thinking outside the confines of my saddle, which also provides me a place to retrospect and consider my life and how much time I have left before my cowboy riding slips away.
For readers here, the Santa Elena Cantina will be a place to find a story, hopefully an entertaining story that maybe can be carried with them on their journeys. It may or may not work out for every reader, but the doors open here, the beer is cold, my table in the back always ahs a chair you can side up to and you're always welcome to visit.
Thanks for stopping by and don't be bashful about sharing a spot her in the back again soon.
thelostcowboy
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