Just wanted to be sure you knew that my Uncle Fred, as good a cowboy as you might ever meet, has left us. He was having a little trouble this last Sunday morning so Marian, his wife, called for the paramedics and they stuck him in an ambulance for a ride to the hospital. Fred, however, had taken that ride before and it appears that this was just one too many times for his liking. Which if you knew Fred is understandable.
Don't know how he got a horse into the ambulance, or even his boots, big belt buckle, and cowboy hat. But somehow he did and while the ambulance raced down the highway with its lights flashing and siren wailing, hell-bent for election, Fred opened the back door and found himself on a dusty trail more to his liking.
It must have felt awful good to Fred to be up on a good horse again. He had owned horses all his life, since he was a teen-age kid and saved up enough to buy his first. Hired this old Mexican to break and train his horses, though it isn't correct, you know, to call people by their race anymore. Fred wasn't much bothered by such conventions, he hadn't even gotten over using the "N" word. So it was funny to his friends that in his last days he was cared for a kind and caring guy from Africa. Sort of became his shower mate and all that, if you know what I mean.
Well, like I said, Fred owned horses all his life; he would sell one now and then if it took his fancy, but he just plain liked horses and didn't mind paying for all that hay. And as I was saying before I got side-tracked, it must have felt awful good to Fred to be back on a horse--it had been, you know, some time since he could do that. And I reckon it felt pretty good to have his boots back on again too and not have that bandage on his foot.
That bandage had to do with a pretty bad accident he had as a teenager, something to do with his Harley Davidson motorcycle and some buddies who accidently got their car in his way. Anyway, he has had problems with a bum leg all his life, though you wouldn't have ever heard him complain about it. He survived that accident, though he spent most of a year in the hospital. Survived a lot of other stuff too, for he was 92 when he left us.
So there he went mounted up on his horse with his favorite saddle, wearing one of his dozen or so pair of boots, and a cowboy hat taken off the pile he kept in the house. And he was free now. Free of all those bandages, and that wheel chair, and the doctors and pills, and everything else that comes with the ravages of age.
And he headed for a distant hill that seemed to him--something that he couldn't quite understand for it came as a surprise--like the hills in Nevada where he first ran a ranch back at the beginning of his manhood. And he could smell the sagebrush again, and hear the lowing of the cattle, and feel a fresh breeze in his face. And all this felt as good as anything could feel on this good earth.
And as he rode along he remembered Miriam, who used to ride with him, and looked around for her, but it seemed she wasn't ready for this ride. Not yet. All this caused him to think of the night he first met her. There used to this old roadhouse outside of Roseville, quite a way outside where the police wouldn't bother the kids if they wanted to have some fun. And on Saturday night he would put on his best shirt and race out there on his motorcycle to have a little refreshment and dance with the girls. Fred liked girls, cut a big swath around town, and the girls liked him pretty well too. IF Fred was anything, he was a likable guy, everyone knows that.
So this night that he met Miriam he had stopped at a place across the way that served refreshments and ordered a drink. Well he must have bumped into someone, though he wasn't one to do that, and they objected and a few words were said and the only honorable thing for Fred to do was to bust him in the chops. Which he did. And the guy went down but he had a bunch of friends and a pretty big fight broke out. After they had messed up the bar--I guess you figured this was happening in a bar, didn't you?--the fight moved outdoors and though Fred was outnumbered he gave a good account of himself.
Only problem was that in the punching and pulling and shoving, his best shirt had been torn off and all that was left were the cuffs. So as he stood there in the night air, bare-chested and panting for breathe, he decided he didn't mind losing the shirt, but he damn well wasn't going to miss a night of dancing. So Fred jumped back on his motorcycle, raced home, got a new shirt, and returned to the dance hall. And as I said, that was the night he met Miriam. And in the way that one thing leads to another he and Miriam went and got married and made their life together. Years later Fred told me that getting hitched to Miriam was the best thing that he had ever done.
Now as Fred rode his horse towards the hills he tried to understand how they, for no reason he could think of, brought back all those memories of the good old days in Nevada. Then it occurred to him that he hadn't said good-bye to his kids. Being a cowboy it was just natural that Fred would have some sons who would take to cowboying just like he did. But the good Lord played a trick on Fred--He gave him daughters! Four of them. And these daughters grew up pretty much on horseback, doing just about everything a cowboy might do, except they were a lot better looking. He and Miriam must have reared them well, for they turned into strong, capable women, who did well at whatever they turned their hand to.
And, by and by, these cowgirls went and got married and along came these grandchildren. "Funny thing," Fred used to say, "I only had four girls but I have 8 sons-in-law!" And it was true, the girls decided a time or two that their husband didn't measure up so they sent him packing down the road. And though the husbands didn't manage to keep their wives, they managed to keep Fred. He remained their good friend and they would come to see him now and then, staying in touch. And Fred thought about all of these people in his family as he rode along.
As the beckoning horizon drew nearer, Fred got to thinking about what it is that one should say when he or she meets St. Peter at the Pearly Gate. He supposed you would have to give some account of yourself so he began to compose a story. There was a small problem however--whenever Fred told a story, it tended to get better and better until folks listened started to suspect he was fooling them, telling a tall story. It wouldn't do for St. Peter not to buy your tale. So he thought long and hard on what to say about his life. He had been a good husband, Mariam didn't have any complaints and their marriage had been long and companionable. And he loved his girls and they loved him, and had raised them well, so that wasn't a problem.
Furthermore, it wasn't his practice to say bad words, though, on account of his cowboy upbringing he had never calculated that "Hell" and "Damn" were bad words. Shucks, they were colorful words, brought a certain cowboy savor faire to a sentence, you know. Heck, "helluva" was a damn good adjective, wasn't it? Surely St. Peter would understand that. And there was always the chance, you know, that St. Peter enjoyed a little poker, and that Fred could take the good points he had accumulated over his life and maybe add a few chips to the pile. And he though of his sister Nina's husband Bob who had gone on ahead. Bob would put in a good word for him. They might have never met, they were different guys, you know, but through Nina they became good friends. He knew he could count on Bob.
So he rode along and thought about that damned ambulance that had been taking him to the hospital, and how surprised they would be when they arrived and found that he had slipped away. And he realized now, with a start, that the distant hills suddenly reminded him more of the ones around his boyhood home in Eureka, Utah. And he remembered the sweetness of his years there, growing up by the railroad tracks, and how he had missed his Grandma and Grandpa Noakes all this time, and how great it would be to see them again.
And as he came over the highest hill he looked back, at all that had been his life, and he tipped his hat. A tip of his cowboy hat. A salute to all that was good, and sweet, and wonderful about life. And he felt very grateful, and he poked his horse, to hurry him up, and moved towards the gate that was opening before him.
Love, Skip
July 21, 2008