Greetings from the outback!

It’s been quite a year out here. Now that winter has settled in we are drowning in drought relief. Wherever there isn’t standing water there is running water. Everywhere else is mud.
The political swamp rats have been out in force this past year and have provided much mirth for us desert dwellers. It’s been said that we live at the end of the world. Well, that ain’t exactly true, but we can see the end of the world from here. Most of us out here in the outback don’t care much about politics ‘cept the local kind which actually affects us. Any political events farther up the food chain than sheriff don’t seem too relevant. The consensus around here is that all those political swamp rats are double dealing bastiges and are just in it for their own gain. So our philosophy is to lay low, and with any luck they won’t notice us. This has worked for us for generations.
Back in the day when you could look your candidate in the eye and maybe have a beer with him while he was out on a tour of the countryside kissing hands and shaking babies, you might be able to get a read on him. Now it’s all smoke and mirrors and screenshots. Those with tv’s are mesmerized. But the cowboys out here on ranches and down at the bar are more interested in their trucks, their dogs, their other critters and what’s for supper than in seeing some character on a screen lie to us. There’s plenty of local lying to go around. We don’t need to import it. The national events did give us some serious entertainment though. We are amazed at how cranked up city folks get about stuff, most of which is pure speculation and drivel and ultimately turns out to be false anyway. Out here we place value on integrity. Look a man in the eye, shoot straight and keep your hands off our women unless your intentions are honorable.
Now we had a preacher come to town last summer who was quite a dandy. He dressed up all fine, had his hair a little long in a ponytail and wore a string of beads outside his collar. He blew into town in one of those little european cars so small I could park it in the bed of my pickup, said that his car was for the ecology. It didn’t look to me like that thing could get out of its own way. It only had one seat in it and barely had room for him and his gear. He said there was actually room for one more person but his gear was cluttered. He told us he was a traveling preacher and was here to bring us salvation. That brought a few snickers. He had a real silky voice and a sparkle in his eye and the first night he came to town he landed at our local watering hole. Right away he struck up with our local pastor out having a beer and chummed himself into a roof and a bed. After a week or so he got himself into the pulpit one Sunday and sure enough he preached all hellfire and salvation.
Now the ladies in town thought this guy was kind of cute with his beads and long hair and that silky voice. Most of the men in town looked at him with more than a little suspicion. He spent his days walking around town. He always had a ready conversation for the ladies, but just a nod to any of the working men in town. He wasn't too interested in doing any ranch work either, said he had souls to save. Besides, he had his food and found at the local pastors and so wasn’t really in any need.
My brother Jerry referred to him as a sharp dressed man. He walked around town for those few weeks last summer until one evening when a local rancher with a sixteen year old daughter named Ruby, a pretty redhead who is known to be a little wild, came to town looking for her. She hadn’t been seen around home all afternoon, and the cows had missed their afternoon milking. Cow miliking is serious business. Them old bossies don’t like being off schedule, makes them damn uncomfortable, and when they are uncomfortable they let you know it. No rancher ever allows that to happen.
Our rancher on finding his daughter nowhere in town where she might normally be found, headed out to the nearby hot spings on advice from a couple of us at the bar. There he found his daughter with the new “ Preacher “ in the hot soak very nearly in the clothes they were born in and engaged in some heavy petting as they say in the city. His girl had the preacher’s beads around her neck and his arms around her middle and other than that not much else. This was more than the frantic father could abide and he jumped from his pickup and waded into pond and retrieved his daughter to the cab of his truck, she all the while kicking and protesting that nothing was amiss. The preacher retreated to the far end of the pool hoping that he might not be noticed, or at least might be forgotten.
Darrell noticed him all right and as he was driving away in his big 4 wheel drive dually pickup, he stopped. And in his rage backed it up into the preacher's little eco mobile and pushed it right into the pond, the deep end as it turned out. Then he lit out with his daughter for home. The next day word was going around town that the new preacher was drowned or had left without word. Our pastor had heard nothing of him and so some of us went out to the hot pond where we found the little eco mobile up to its roof in hot water and mud. On pulling it out we found it with not much inside but some former books and soggy clothes.
No one is sure just how the young preacher got out of town. He wasn’t picked up by a local and he didn’t end up in Lakeview or Burns. Some figure he left cross country cause he didn’t want to face the rest of the town. Darrell’s daughter is all right and no worse for wear and did end up with the preachers beads .
Down at the bar the discussion is split about 50-50 as to whether the preacher or young Ruby was the instigator of the hot pond incident. The men are sure that the preacher sweet talked that girl and the town women are sure she lured him out to the pond. The little eco car is now in the iron pile out at the dump, though no one figures there’s much iron in it.The dump master says that it might cost more to recycle it than It’s worth.
It’s been kinda normal around these parts since then. The alfalfa is baled and in the barn and winter has come in, and you never know how that might turn out. They turn weather prediction over to marmots this time of year so you can’t count on anything. But there is nothing like a woodstove to make you feel warm this time of year, so there is always work to do tending to the firewood pile and a warm place to relax in.

Well all you beadheads, keep yer powder dry and that keep that bead string in the middle of the hole.
til whenever,
Dog