The Frank Horse

A few years back I attended my 25th high school reunion. People crutching along toward the hall, tired from the battle for the handicapped spots out front where the lucky few could park their vans.

I talked to a guy named Sergio. I know it sounds like start of a rent-boy story, but no. This man was the current honey of the estimable Liz Bock, divorced, 2 kids. I like these long 2nd relationships where the pretense of marriage is GONE. The guys never did want to get married, and the chicks are disabused of the specialness after the first one. Liz got the coveted Charles Bradsky Ex-Spouse Bitterness award by saying of her ex: "Yeah, I finally got rid of Curtis. That asshole."

Charles had the award named after him at the 10th high school reunion when he introduced himself as "Charles, happily divorced from that bitch wife of mine." I wish I had it on tape. It was bitterness incarnate.

The reason I treaded this tangent is to return to Sergio, actual cowhand. He works as a hard man around Newcastle. "Hard man" is how you say the term hired man.

He has a handlebar mustache. He wears Wranglers, mostly the MWZ line, the cowboy jean. He hasn't transitioned to the loose-fit, unless he was just dressing fancy for the anniversary show.

White wrangler dress shirts, starched. Now we're getting somewhere. Boots? Of course, and a belt with a big buckle. But the guy is nice and it takes all kinds. Pa showed me ranching could be done in running shoes, to the benefit of the foot, too. Costumes are good. At least Sergio didn't have spurs and a scarf. That is way Western gay. You shouldn't be spurring horses anyway. They behave better without.

I had to talk to Sergio about ranching. I'll hit anybody up for a fix. Going back to our place and talking to the cousins running it, that is happiness embodied for me. Sergio would do as a placeholder. Liz, too, who grew up on a ranch, and commented to me that I didn't say much about it at high school at St. Martin's. Probably because I thought no one gave a shit. Also I was in escape-pod mode and didn't think much about it.

I mooned about ranching buffalo. Of course I want to. He shook his head, unwilling to utter words. I followed, "What, you don't like the meat?"

Sergio: "They're just damned hard to work." He darts his head around the room after saying damned, knowing he's in a group of Catholic school graduates. I cuss the worst of anyone I know, and the rest of the group has to spend a long time at confession, if you know what I mean.

Sergio is a horseman, a cowboy. That means you ride hard and impose your will on the kittles (cattle). Buffalo are less prone to being imposed upon. Tamed, if you will.

They will flat out catch a horse in a sprint. Horses are terrified of them because they know it. Give a horse a lead (with a fat-ass guy on his back), and a buffalo, bull or cow, will catch it and hook it and the rider will go down in a dizzying pile.

Once in corrals and chutes, they will run and jump and climb and all kinds of shit. They are the nimblest things you can imagine. Fast, strong and smart. The chutes at Custer State Park are dented and bent up from assaults by buffalo who live wild and are culled once a year in the fall.

The day after the reunion, I related this story to Pa. Pa did a little ranching. He raked hay from 1942 through 1996. He did the concomitant hundreds of other jobs required of a rancher, too.

He inherited a trait from the original Dan Page, who I like to call "the real Dan Page". My grandfather. Don't make things hard. There are too many things left to do today to waste energy
doing things hard.

Like rounding up buffalo. My entire career as a young person was spent seeing dork-asses yippy-kai-yay around on their horses with the trimmed manes. Cattle are excitable, but also they are the most docile creatures imaginable if treated with some patience. Start yelling and pushing them, and they will bolt and fight you the whole way.

So I told Pa about Sergio's claim that buffalo were hard to handle. He half-chuckled - a virtual gusher of response from the often-staid Pa.

"What, what is it Paw?" I asked him in the Little House On the Prairie voice, the plaintive one Melissa and Laura used when asking "How come, Paw?" and "What happined, Paw?" What a douche-baggy show. We watched it regularly, for tips on how we should behave as ruralites.

Pa cleared his throat several times. A neighbor had called and said they were going to round up some buffalo, could he help? Well, I don't think I'm doing anything that morning, yah, not working at the YMCA until next weekend. Saturday, sure, I could come over and maybe help a little.

{Conversation shortened}

Pa had this clever little plan. He went over a couple hours before the riders were to assemble, walking out in the buffalo pasture, wearing running shoes. He carried a sack with him. A herd of 20-25 buffalo, and my 73-year-old Pa has a sack.

He walked over toward them, far away but just moving toward them, until they looked up and paid a little attention to him. He upended the heavy part of the sack a little, dumping bovine foodstuff on the ground. All pastured animals know this gesture. It's food time.

One animal took a step toward the little food line dumped from the bag. That was all it took. Herd animals have complete inertia. They will stay standing where they are, grazing, always grazing, until one of the herd moves with purpose in one direction. Then, the others respond as if in a molecule, being pulled by one moving atom.

When the lead animal (usually a cow) reaches the pile and begins feeding, the rest come jogging over to eat. With not much there, they get a lick or a couple bites, but at least the smell and a little feeding frenzy. Hey, it's boring out on the plains. We watched Little House on the Prairie, to give you an example.

Meanwhile, Pa has ambled another quarter mile farther, where he waits until the buffalo have eaten every grain of corn or cake and are looking at him.

"Then I poured out a little more, a pretty decent little pile." Sure enough, here came the buffalo at a fast walk. Again they cleaned up the feed and looked at Frank.

"Then I walked into the middle of the corral and upended the feed sack in a pile. In came every single animal, and when they were eating I went over and shut the gate. It wasn't really that hard. They weren't stirred up at all. Seemed to be happy in the corral.

So I went on down to Jerry's (or whatever) place where the cowboys were starting to gather. Jerry asked me, 'where did you come from, Frank, I didn't see you drive up.' I told him I walked through the buffalo pasture and picked up the buffalo along the way. He said, 'Oh.' "

Sometimes you pick the Buck horse - the buckskin one. Sometimes you pick the Paint horse - the dappled one. You won't do wrong with Tom or Joe, but in any event it isn't just cowboying. You've got to have a decent horse.

If you want something done, go catch yourself the Frank horse.

Claroofus Jones