Rain woke me up the other morning. Thunder rolled me out of bed. I was thinking about an Ace Reed Feed Store calendar cartoon of two cowboys in slickers and in a downpour sitting on their wet horses hock deep in rushing water. One said to the other “I seen a bad drought start just like this.”
When I was first accepted to Western Writers of America back in the ‘80s the first convention I attended was in San Antonio. The Daughters of the Texas Revolution had taken over the Alamo and really made it shine. When I was in the Air Force 20 years earlier the site had been a flea market selling tee shirts and Korean made tomahawks. Today on those grounds you almost have a feel for the loneliness of those 180 men challenged by Travis to die.
I met John Erickson, of Hank the Cow Dog fame, there and he introduced me to Ace Reed. John had just completed a biography about Ace and was a close friend. So after all those years of laughing at the man’s cartoons there he was face to face and as funny as his art work, every bit as hilarious as his calendars.
He told the whole group he didn’t know why anyone wanted to be a cowboy and why did we write about them. An old cowboy got up before dawn in the cold, heated some old coffee and left over beans, ate them, saddled a salty bronc and if he didn’t get thrown off, went on and worked cattle all day.
Now the sheep man – he got up and stoked the fire in his small stove and then looked out the door of his snug wagon to survey things. His border collies Doc and Felix had the flock under control. He went back, made sourdough biscuits, fried bacon and scrambled eggs to go with it, and he might even have had some flour gravy to top it, with his fresh boiled coffee in a cup in his hand to leisurely dine upon.
Ace laughed. “And you guys write about cowboys. Sheep herders had it made.”
Those calendars were sure sought after each year and folks kept them for years to show some old buddy the “funniest one,” like about the woman asking her husband, “How come other folks drive cars and have wrecks and all we have to drive is wrecks?”
Ace had that unique way of turning common things into humor. It is an art and few master it. They say folks are naturally funny or not. No, some folks learn the twist of humor and can do it at no expense to the party they pick on. A joke is never a joke when it singles out and embarrasses someone, but if we can laugh at our own mistakes then it's fun.
Years ago, a poultry grower friend of mine owned one pair of red silk boxer shorts. They came as a gag gift and he didn’t tell anyone he even owned them. But one day he accidentally rolled a log on his leg and broke it cutting down some trees. His wife rushed him to town to the hospital, him dreading the outcome all the way… that morning he’d put on those fancy pair of silk boxers because they were handy and he was in a hurry.
At the hospital, they took off his jeans of course, and there he was, in his red briefs and a face to match them. He swore they all snickered in x-ray, the emergency room and then when they put the cast on about his attire.
I came by to see how he was doing the next day.
“Doing? Why I’m doing without them.”
“Without what?”
“Those dang red boxer shorts of mine.” We both laughed when he retold the story.
Another funny one: About a Texas rancher who was pretty frugal and his wife told him to buy some new underwear. All of his had holes in it.
“Aw, it won’t hurt to wear it. No ones sees it anyway.”
“All right,” she said, not to fuss with him. “But you’ll regret it.”
They went to Fort Worth and were eating in a steak house. The place was robbed by a gang that demanded all the men shed their pants so they would not pursue them, and they’d also have their wallets.
The next morning she read the headlines to him. “West Texas Rancher Held Up in Holey Underwear in the Steak House Robbery.”
Western novelist Dusty Richards and his wife Pat live on Beaver Lake in northwest Arkansas. For more information about his books you can email Dusty by visiting www.ozarksfn.com and click on 'Contact Us' or call 1-866-532-1960.
