LITTLE KID COWBOY & HIS COWBOY HATS

THIS IS MY ‘HIGH LONESOME FEED STORE HAT’ & FOR MY POST ABOUT THE BOOK I HAVE IN MY HAND JUST CLICK JENNY & SCROLL ABOUT TWO THIRDS THE WAY DOWN

Under dark drizzly skies we had a bit of foreboding forest to walk through this morning. Slight mist in the still air even kept the birds quietly to themselves. At any moment I expected a grizzled old Ogre to come rumbling out of the nearby underbrush & chase us all the way home.

Yabba-dabba-do any excuse will do & with that thought foremost in mind me & the little Sweets Jeeped ourselves off to Goderich for a few early Sunday morning groceries. No point in me going through my grocery list because I was smart enough to take the Jeep this time & not the motorcycle.  Okay, two jars of peanut butter for sure.

 

 

TOM way up there in that Alaska place wondered if it could be a KUDZU type vine growing up & around that old derelict windmill tower in Saturday’s post.  I’m thinking it could be & we have really been noticing a lot of stuff looking like that this year.  Rapid plant growth in these parts the last few months has been rather surprising. 

Some talk the last couple days of a few interior renovations at our house here but until that becomes an absolute reality I will stifle my blabbering fingers if I know what's good for me!!

AN OVERALL VIEW OF OUR BACKYARD PRICKLY PEAR CACTUS PLANT

  

‘CROPPED’ & ‘UN-CROPPED’

I've never quite understood why some folks don't like Air Conditioning. I can stand outside on our deck on a hot heavy humid & totally uncomfortable day with my shirt sweatingly stuck to me or I can step inside the house & be in cool comfortable temps 20 degrees cooler & feel totally invigorated & re-energized. Guess I’m not quite understanding what is not to like about A/C.

 

A FEW FOCUSING PROBLEMS IN THESE HASTY BEE PHOTOS TODAY BUT DECIDED TO INCLUDE THEM ANYWAY

Although I will never be, I will always be........a wannabe……Cowboy. I was a real Cowboy once when I was a kid. I thought I was Hopalong Cassidy for awhile. But that idea kind of hopped along after a bit when I never could seem to find a white horse anywhere.  Had me a Cowboy hat & shootin iron though. My imagination was pretty darn good with that shootin iron too. Always kinda figured I was born on the wrong side of the country & too darn far north for me to be the kinda Cowboy I wanted to be. Never thought I'd ever like being one of them there cold weather Cowboys. All my favorite Cowpokes roamed the great American South-West with it’s tumblin Tumbleweeds, rattlin Rattlersnakes, & big 4 armed Saguaro Cactamooses reaching all the way up into that tall deep blue & endless Arizona sky. Lots of mountains, deserts, & old western towns.  Little could I imagine as a kid that one day I would be living, traveling, & owning a little ranch style house right in that very sun drenched & dusty land I had once dreamed about oh those so many years ago.

CARLSBAD NEW MEXICO DECEMBER 2006, MY HAT WAS ABOUT ONE HOUR OLD & ALREADY OUR LITTLE MOTORMOUSE WAS WORRIED ABOUT THAT FUNNY LOOKING THING ON DAD’S HEAD (ROCKWOOD 5TH WHEEL)

Took nearly 50 years for that little Kid Cowboy to make his way to the wild & gun smoked lands of his yesteryear childhood though. And he sure wasn't, & he sure hasn't ever been disappointed. He still doesn't have a horse or a shootin iron but by golly he's got 3 Cowboy hats now. First one was black & came out of an Indian trading post near Carlsbad New Mexico back in 06. Second one was big & white & I picked me that one up in the tumbledown dusty little town of Elfrida Arizona about 3 years ago. Came right out of the High Lonesome Trading Company feed store there. Might have even had some High Lonesome feed stuck on it too. Bought my current 210 gallon Cowboy hat in another old store a couple winters ago on one of the most infamous streets in America's western history. Allen Street, Tombstone Arizona. The very street Wyatt Earp & his brothers along with Doc Holliday shot it out with the Clanton & McLaury boys near the OK Corral back on October 26th 1881.  Fittingly enough my brown cowboy hat is actually known as, the Tombstone style hat.

MY BIG BROWN TOMBSTONE COWBOY HAT IN CONGRESS ARIZONA THIS PAST DECEMBER

I love my big old brown Cowboy hat but I only wear it in the West while we are there during the winter. In a few months from now somewhere west of the Mississippi I will que up my iPod to the Winnie Wagons stereo & quietly yodel myself along to a host of western harmonies by ‘The Sons Of The Pioneers’. (ok, so how do ya yodel quietly) I will snug down my big brown Cowboy hat over my growing gray mop of mangy hair & let my little Kid Cowboy mind once again ride it's galloping imagination over sweeping plains, across arid cactus filled deserts, & through towering mountain canyons . Giddyup you bunch a mangy cusses........................

ON OUR JEEP TOURS THIS IS OFTEN OUR LAST PIT STOP PLACE FOR THE DAY BEFORE DRIVING THE FINAL 15 MINUTES HOME…IT’S A FAVORITE STOP FOR PHEEBS & I

When someone asks about what time the ice cream store closes you know they are really saying. ‘I wanna go to the ice cream store’!! And so it was off to the ice cream parlour in downtown Bayfield after supper tonight we went. Kelly had a hankering for ice cream. It was a Chocolate Sundae she was needing & it was a small Pralines cone I wasn’t needing. And of course she made me eat half her Chocolate Sundae too:(( It is not often I am into Bayfield but thought tonight maybe it’s about time I took my camera for a walk around town again. Last time I did that was in August of 2008. Bayfield is a really unique little village & is a favorite destination for road travelers & mariners alike.  Yep, gonna go get me some more downtown Bayfield pics soon.

 

 

NO, THAT IS NOT MY ICE CREAM CONE SITTING ON THE COUNTER!!

Okay Ed, found another spot for that Blog Followers list. But it might move around again over the next few days darn it.........:))  

<<< SPIDERWORT PLANT IN OUR FRONT YARD

GROANER'S CORNER:(( Ten Things My Parents Taught Me.........

1. My Parents taught me TO APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE ..
"If you're going to kill each other, do it outside… I just finished cleaning."
2. My Parents taught me RELIGION.
"You better pray that will come out of the carpet."
3. My Parents taught me about TIME TRAVEL.
"If you don't straighten up, I'm going to knock you into the middle of next week!"
4. My Parents taught me LOGIC.
"Because I said so, that's why."
5. My Parents taught me MORE LOGIC .
"If you fall out of that swing and break your neck, you're not going to the store with me."
6. My Parents taught me FORESIGHT.
"Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you're in an accident."
7. My Parents taught me IRONY.
"Keep crying, and I'll give you something to cry about."
8. My Parents taught me about the science of OSMOSIS.
"Shut your mouth and eat your supper"
9. My Parents taught me about CONTORTIONISM.
"Will you look at that dirt on the back of your neck!"
10. My Parents taught me about STAMINA.
"You'll sit there until all that spinach is gone."

And always remember.......Some day when they discover the center of the Universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it.

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- Tourists see the world, travelers experience it.
- Home is where your pet is:))
- "If having a soul means being able to feel
love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals
are better off than a lot of humans."
(James Herriot)
- The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails -William Arthur Ward
- The only thing better than right now will someday be the memories of right now...AL.
- It is not so much having nothing to do as it is not having the interest to do something....AL.