montague county moments

    i found out why big-0 had to trade both vehicles !! he needed the cash rebate….

   he’s taken his kids snow-skying every christmas for so long it’s become a family tradition…except this year he was short on cash and did’nt have the heart to tell his kids he was busted out…. so he traded down on a couple of gas-hogs in the fleet and got enough rebate money to go to angel-fire…

  the tradition lives on !! but only by the narrowest margin.. i’m thinking next year they’ll have to pray for a five inch snow on queen’s peak… or go down the slide at kiwanha’s park and call it good !!

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   the bulldozer salesman is hosting a new year’s eve party at mary’s ranch house tonight… he has plenty of left over slumgullian from the employee christmas party at the bulldozer barn west of nocona… party favors will include old bumper stickers from mooches senate race and of course those much sought after matches from fenoglio bail bonds… pocket calenders from the big bank and guest memberships to yohee’s ( post ) for alcoholic veterans…

    he’s pulled out all the stops !!  hired corky and the del-rays to play for the midnight dance…built a big fire in the fireplace with stolen wood… even arranged for a fireworks display at the stroke of midnight… ( sponsored by woody and the boys)….provided woody’s powder ain’t still wet from the wedding wine spillage…

   if your not scheduled for a colostomy tonight , perhaps you can drop by chippers house for an equally enjoyable experience… just turn right past that gate where the dead chickens hung for weeks….don’t forget your two-wheel trailer for stealing furniture and appliances….

      just a word of caution ! don’t leave any skid marks on his driveway… he takes it personal !!

    get your new year off to a bad start… then there’s no direction to go but up!!… kennedy is furnishing the drinks..( tap water and green tea )… hire a sitter for the kids as this will certainly be no place for unseasoned eyes or ears… take full advantage of the valet parking under the close supervision of the judges daughter…another note of caution… lock all booze safely in the trunk… she has a nose for liquor and is dryer than any sand bed in hildreth pool…

    come at your own risk ,but come quick… you don’t want to miss the police raid….

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   the wooded silent serenity has been broken on the western slope of noble hill…the new year is bringing the end to a barnett shale oil lease and end to peace and quiet of our deed restricted neighborhood for months to come…

   the steady hum of a cat-diesel engine is a constant reminder that i do not own the mineral rights under the  homestead….. ( sour-grapes)

     less than a quarter-mile from my bedroom the incessant search for oil and gas continues as the diamond tipped bit grinds it’s way through limestone formations , on it’s never ending journey to oil deposits a mile or more below the surface pipe….

    i suppose a month of interrupted sleep is a small price to pay to ensure the continued wealth of lease holders and oil barons alike..

    however , even as equipment drills on the current well , dozers work with deliberate determination to build the next drilling site …. a thousand feet closer to where i sleep….

   all this unseasonable noise and fona destruction would be more than i could endure if not for the extremely large compensation check that is surely laying on tom’s desk as i write…..

    go ahead and drop it in the mail tom !  my chickens have quit laying eggs and i’m having trouble hearing the t.v……. you need to help the poor people…. go green… send money. !!

    i think you have sufficiently proved over the last couple of years that money means absolutely nothing to a man of means…. send me a couple of thousand , you spent more than that on christmas lights….. send money , i’ll stuff it in my ears if need be , to get a good nights sleep….

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    i made that ten mile trip to bible class this morning… it was family day so ed had to wait for his bride to complete all those feminine things necessary to venture outside the house before he could leave…… i went on alone rather than wait to save that three dollars on gasoline by moochin a ride in his new chevy pickup…

    while soaking up complementary coffee and pastries before church , the stamplicker shared a new year’s story with me….. he said he went out to kennedy’s ranch last night for a few pre-season cocktails… just a warmup for the big performance on monday night…( conditioning )

    stamp licker retired reported that kennedy had the thermostat set on sixty-five… he was sitting in his lazy-boy , wearing insulated cover-alls and ear muffs … drinking discounted schaffers beer with his fur lined leather gloves….stamp -licker chipped two teeth while chattering action tried to maintain core temperature in the walk-in freezer….

     tom’s sermon this morning made a point that i can only hope ed payed attention to….. tom said believers should not let their differences destroy their unity in Christ….

     i think he was attempting to tell ed , in biblical terms , that  ed should not prohibit me from smoking in his new pickup… that’s how i took it anyhow…

    ed suggested that we go to evangelical conservative , chipper , for an official ruling on the smoking issue… chipper said there’s a reason they don’t put cigarette lighters in vehicles anymore…. i’m thinking it’s because the world today is saturated with gopher matches from fenoglio bail bonds..

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  i’m concerned that my associate (big-o) is in dire straights financially… he’s always driven the king ranch edition ford pickup… we’re talking leather seats.. on-star.. and xm radio.. dual-cab , but as 2007 draws to a close , he’s downsized to a chevrolet…. returned to his humble upbringing…

    i also saw his young bride in town this morning… did’nt recognize her at first… she wasn’t in that lincoln navigator… looks like the navigating days are done…. she was driving a g.m.c. yucon with her head down.. still displaying the paper tags.. fresh from the dealership…

   he’s gone to general motors…all the way around. they’ve got that nothing down and just a little bit a month program… either he’s down on his luck or slack broke the egg in’em… either way it just don’t look right for the big-banks board member’s wife to drive a common soccer mom’s ride after a loaf of bread….

    looks like  he’d qualify for car loan at his own bank ?… of course he’ll have to fill out that five page credit history just like the poor people have done for years… then wait in line to see falsone….and hope for the best….  ( shoot low sherrif … he’s riding a shetland !!! )

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   i’m somewhat reluctant to report another story concerning our local super wal-mart store , due to a near death experience after the last report… however, this actual account of a recent happening simply can not go untold..

    a lady wearing a large overcoat , approached the check-out counter with a cart and several items…. the teller carefully tallied each item then told the lady what the total charges would be…

   she announced that she would be giving a check for her purchase and began digging through her overcoat for the check-book…. at which time a dominecker rooster stuck his head out of a large front pocket and began surveying the check-out line….

    the startled checker says .. is that a live chicken in your coat ?   yes , acknowledged the red-neck shopper… ya’ see i was afraid to leave the chicken in the car because i’m traveling with a large dog… one or the other had to come in the store with me in order to avoid confrontation in my absence…. i opted to bring the chicken along because i thought you had a store policy against dogs…….

     probably most folks who have never lived in montague county would doubt the validity of this actual occurrence… i assure you this is no fabrication or exaggeration…. anyone knows a chicken left unattended in a parked car is capable of inflicting real damage to an over aggressive dog and could soil the dash as well…  possibly eat all your corn-nuts if left unsupervised !!

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  santa hasn’t found my house til yet…. i spent my four days off working for the windmill water company… fixing leaks and frozen chlorine injectors… made enough extra cash to make a token payment on this years property taxes… didn’t want that visit from the hermanator like little danny got on christmas eve…

    my kids and grandkids won’t be home til saturday , for the traditional christmas at the carter ranch… four days late and four dollars short…. i bought one of those billy henley hams from mooch… man that thing is tastey… shot up on liquid smoke with a hypodermic syringe right there in that exon gas station next to brenda’s hog trough… it wasn’t cheap , but it was reasonable…

    chipper buys all his meat from mooch , he likes that heavy second hand smoke flavor…. reminds him of his skunky past life at the fifty-nine club….drinking rollers and chasing women of questionable moral values..

     i bought my ol’ pal, ed , a box of  those omaha steaks for christmas… it was the least i could do… after all , we are business partners on a dozen stunted grape-vines and a b.b. red rooster… re-gifted from w.w. (red) bird-eye bush….

 we’re lookin to share a glass of red wine and a baked chicken dinner sometime in this millennium… both raised on the last-chance ranch just east of town…

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    a couple of weeks back my old pal chipper invited a chosen few over to pick up pecans for the upcoming holiday confectionery treats…..

    i’d seen those grafted paper-shells growing down by the babbling brook that winds it’s way through the lush bottom land on chipper’s ranch… floyd womack grafted those trees years ago in anticipation of this very day…. a feast of huge papershells awaited…

     ed , betsy and i arrived at the ranch house with no less than three five gallon buckets for the staple ingredient of nine inch pies….

    chipper and his young bride lead the way to the grove on their four-wheeler… we crossed the old iron-rail bridge and headed for the prime trees along the creek bottom….. when suddenly and without warning he  turned through a gate and started to climb up the goat trail leading to a single half grown tree half way up a rock covered mountain…. leaving the prime trees behind….

    it was clearly a manifestation of a devious plot….he was taking ed and me to a sub-standard scrub pecan growing in the rocky soil….. the moochers tree !

    chipper flailed the tree while the rest of us gathered the cull-pecans… we filled our buckets and drove back past the trees in the rich valley below… i guess he was saving them for his more prosperous and influential friends… you can’t look a gift-horse in the mouth !

    after arriving back at the carter ranch , i began shelling these nuggets of gold…. they were peathy !! substandard quality, under developed , inferior in taste and color…bitter… and did i say peathy…

    rather than dump the whole bucket in the trash , i decided to ration them to the several families of squirrels that reside in the woods surrounding my humble country home…

     each day while feeding my chicken herd , i’d pour out a small bucket of chipper’s pecans for the squirrels… they’d gather each and every pecan from the step in front of the aviary…

    then unexpectedly on the third day , as i approached the aviary , i noticed a note laying on the step where i’d been pouring the pecans…. it said ” no more peathy pecans ” if we wanted a substandard pecan diet , we’d go across the pasture to chipper’s peathy pecan tree half way up the mountain where the crows feed….signed  ” disappointed squirrel “

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   a  few christmases back chipper decided to buy his grandkids a pony to keep at the ranch…. so they could learn to ride… it would be the perfect christmas gift…

   he located a trusty steed.. a smooth mouthed shetland… in billy bell’s killer pen… anyhow he bought  the oat-burner and in order to hide it from grandkids he unloaded it in his neighbors pasture… just for safe keeping til christmas arrived… weeks passed….

   then one foggy christmas eve tommy o’neal came to say… chipper let’s have a few drinks to celebrate the season…they proceeded to drink up everything on the ranch… til sometime after dark on christmas eve… chipper remembered the kid’s pony…. it needed to be caught and brought to the corral for the christmas morning surprise…

    he commandeered tom’s assistance in the search for the shetland…. two drunks searching fifteen hundred acres of rugged ranchland for the grandkids pony…. the montague mount was nowhere to be found…

    ya see chipper was just drunk enough to remember the horse….but not sober enough to remember that he put it in the neighbors pasture…  he and tom continued to drink and search til the wee hours of the morning.. to no avail..

    finally about two in the morning they decided it was too drunk to continue… they gave up the desperate search… tom dropped chipper off at the ranch-house and headed home…

    chipper arrived at the back door only to discover he had been locked out… no key and no response from the bride……

    not to be denied, chipper began throwing all the firewood out of the wood-box… unloaded a quarter-cord of seasoned oak before crawling through the wood box like a copperhead to gain entry to the house….

  next morning … chippers standing by the window drinking some black coffee…rubbing his head…trying to focus….. wondering what in creation has happened to the grandkids pony , when he sees ol’ trigger standing by the fence… in his neighbors pasture… right where he left him….just in the” nicker” of time for the christmas tree…

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