​Kevin Costner made me mad the other day. I realize that he was acting in the heat of the moment but his actions were completely uncalled for. Mr Costner was helping his Sioux friends fight off those black-hearted Pawnee or Arapahoe or whoever it was that had the nerve to attack their village in “Dances With Wolves’. They had em on the run and Kevin was blasting away with his army regulation six gun as he rode across a creek. After knocking off a few braves, the gun was empty and there was no time to reload. Rather than tuck that thing back in his holster or in the waistband of his pants, he tossed it- tossed it right into that creek -the only pistol within 500 miles, a perfectly good revolver. That chapped my chaps and if there had been another western on DirecTV right then, I would have changed channels.
I love old Westerns. I grew up on them and cowboys were my first heroes. You could keep Batman, Superman and the Green Hornet. Matt Dillon could take any of em - any day of the week.
As a youngster, I shot more than a few teepees full of Indians out of haylofts, off of ditch banks and from behind brush piles where they were trying to sneak up on me and my pal, Jimmy, and steal our gold. I now know that’s politically incorrect and the proper thing would have been to try and reach some mutually beneficial understanding with those Native Americans and share that gold fairly but we were a bloodthirsty bunch back then and suffered from chronic gold fever. Anyway, that would have required a treaty and a treaty would have required us to pass around a peace pipe and our Mom’s wouldn’t let us smoke. They didn’t understand such things.
John Wayne and James Arness were my primary cowboy heroes but I had others; Robert Conrad, Chuck Connors, Doug McClure, Clint Eastwood, Clint Walker, Randolph Scott and Gary Cooper. I always got Scott and Cooper mixed up when I was a young chap- maybe because they were both tall, thin and soft-spoken.
Neither Jimmy nor I wanted to be the sidekick, so we were both top of the line cowboys- had a kind of Tom Selleck - Sam Elliot thing going on. But we imagined up a few folks to watch our back. Lee Marvin and Lee Van Cleef were by far the toughest sidekicks but they were just a bit too dark for a couple of eight year old boys. Jimmy preferred Slim Pickens or Ken Curtis but I was a Jack Elam man – all the way.
We tried to mimic our favorite shows and movies. We would shoot bad guys from out of his Grandpa’s livery stable (barn loft) or barricade ourselves behind hay bales to hold off hundreds of whoopin redskins til the cavalry showed up. I had a couple of old dogs that could lay in the sun and sleep through anything, so we pretended they were our horses that had been shot out from under us and we used them as shields as we picked off the dastardly bad guys that had killed them.
But there were always a couple of things about western plots that really twisted my knot - things that even our heroes sometimes did that I would never do on the parched plains of the John’s Field or the banks of the mighty Macon Ditch.
Similar to Dancing With Wolves, when that six shooter has fired all 12-15 rounds that the scene required and we hear that click that indicates an empty cylinder, our hero throws it to the ground or worse yet- he throws it at the bad guy. I always figured that if you got out of that scrape (which they always did) you were going to need that gun again and throwing an empty gun at a fella – well that somehow seemed sissified to me.
Or
Some ol’ Cowboy is making his way across the desert. He's lost his horse, the sun is beating down and he’s barely able to take the next step. He's down to the last dregs in his canteen. He turns it up and sucks out the last drops, licks his parched and cracked lips and looks off into the distance before tossing the canteen into the sand. DONT DO THAT!! You're probably gonna need that when you get to the next waterin’ hole. How in the world did these guys expect to make their way across that barren earth without a canteen. Now it’s just laying in the desert, no good to anyone and probably full of sand.
These things bothered an eight year old boy. They still bother me today – maybe not as much as the campfire and beans scene in “Blazing Saddles” but still worrisome. Now - “How bout some beans, Mr. Taggert?”

I’m sitting yet again in the breakfast area of another chain motel, eating sausages that I am convinced are filled with sawdust and using a plastic fork to chase runny gravy over a mound of hockey puck biscuits – listening to an old BeeGee’s song over the motel speakers while watching a weather channel that still can’t seem to find the state of Mississippi on their map.

I’m not in a downtown area or an area with ongoing construction work, so most of my fellow diners are tourist types: older women with short blue hair and light blouses sitting across the table from their baldheaded husbands wearing blue jeans and off brand shoes, a tattooed fellow hunched over a bowl of Cheerios, a young couple who appear to be flirting with Goth but have yet to make a full commitment. I suppose we are a fair representation of modern middle America.

I head back for that second cup of coffee when a couple walks in with two young children in tow.  She’s short and stout, pretty and pleasant. The kids are yawning and still dressed in pajamas. He’s a big fellow, tall, built like a linebacker with a butch haircut. The American eagle on his t-shirt stretched to the extreme across his broad back. Ex-military, I am guessing. He looked like a man who could be intimidating at will.

He wasn’t. We exchanged “good mornings” as he waited for me to finish pouring my coffee, They chose a table near me and without intent, I watched as he catered to his family – helping his wife herd the kids through the food choices at the bar, bringing juice, utensils and napkins as needed.

Someone had changed the channel to one of the national news networks. It doesn’t seem to matter which one anymore.  I watch halfheartedly, my head slightly cocked toward the screen. I notice he is doing the same while waiting for his wife to sit down at the table.  We watch as breathless newscasters pontificate about the price of Taylor Swift tickets and the latest buzz about the Barbie movie. Nothing about the war in Ukraine, the economy, the border or true politics.
​
Then the screen lost the little attention that I had committed to it. I watched this young family do something that you don’t see much anymore. They held hands and said grace in the breakfast nook of a Holiday Inn Express. It was a good morning.

The new preacher offered the standard condolences and took a seat on the old sofa across from the middle-aged woman.

“I know this is difficult but I could use your help with the eulogy. I don’t know if you’re aware but your Momma’s pastor for the last fifteen years passed away a few months ago and because of her health, I never got to know her well. I was hoping you could tell me something about her.”

The woman tugged at the sleeves of her blouse and leaned back in her chair, her expression mixed with discomfort and disinterest. “Momma wasn’t close to her kids. We all disappointed her. I can’t tell you much.”

He nodded, “I understand. Family’s hard. Just tell me what you can.”

“She was born at home, a shack up there in the hills. They called her Tinny as a child. In school, she was Tina, then she was Momma for awhile. When she got older, folks round here started calling her Aunt Tinny and strangers called her Mrs. Bradford. Finally, they just started calling her “the patient in room 138.”

The wet snores of the dog at his feet bounced about the room -  from ceiling to floor, from wall to wall, from door to window.  The rasping fits and spurts brought a degree of comfort. That at least, for a time, as the night aged, nothing terrible was pending - no bumps in the night, no monsters under the bed, no midnight knocks at the door. All is well when the dog snores.

The early darkness of December and the thickness of the forest had nearly consumed any light when the Widow approached the group of women. She walked slowly and stopped before reaching them, a small bundle in her hands, her eyes distant, her silence disconcerting.

The stout lady spoke, a slight irritation in her voice. “Well, did you find her?”
​
I watched as the Widow gathered herself and seemed to look beyond the women into the darkness. She nodded. “She’s dead.”

There was no gasp, no hands to the mouth, no tears. The women’s expressions were masked by the darkness, but most turned their heads to the ground as they stood in silence.
​
The Widow walked forward and unwrapped the bundle in her arms. The baby was silent and still.

When he was a younger man, he had one hope for old age - that things would be settled. That he could face infirmity with a peaceful mind. Now that he was old, it was assumed that he had all the attributes of an old man.  Wisdom and peace tempered by aches and pains - anger and desperation. All things that come with a long knowledge of the world. Now his dreams came folded and spindled in fits and spurts - full of gaps.
​
When we become old men, we seek our youth; things that are lost to us. We dream of our childhood - forgetting the pain of little boys.

 I think most are in love with the idea of being a writer but not the writing itself. It is a hard thing to love. We love the attention, the possible acclaim, and certainly the idea of being paid. I suppose that is why there is such bad writing today.

To produce a work of substance, you have to be a storyteller; you have to love the words and the pictures they paint. Everything else must be of little consequence.
​
Unfortunately, getting published often depends on who you are, your tribe, your conformity to the mold cast by those who profit. If you begin your story with the idea of making money, you’ve lost. If you write solely for profit, well, let’s just say there are easier ways to make a living. 

We fired our guns and decided it was best to wait for the others to get there ‘fore we started trampling through them woods. When they showed up, we figured a few of us would stay on the road and keep an eye out in case we flushed anybody out of there and the rest of us scattered across them heavy woods and thickets. We was about two hundred yards into the trees when the creek curved back toward us.

​We could see where the horses came through and saw some tracks of people walking- appeared like they was walking in front of them horses. We looked down that creek bank and there they were. A man and a woman – stripped naked, laying in the shallow water of that creek. They was abused and their bodies was in such a state that it ain’t fittin to describe ‘em to a woman.
​

,​I’m still on speaking terms with the young man I once was. We’ve always nodded in passing but as the years advance, our conversations have become more frequent.  They have become clearer and more concise even though at times they end in little more than nods and grunts of agreement or dissension – he with downturned mouth and mild disappointment and me, myself with a gleam of distant satisfaction that he can’t yet understand.