September 28, 2006

• I haven't been able to get in contact with Lorena or Stephanie the past few days, so I will try again tonight.  Hopefully, I will have something to report to you tomorrow.

  Today, though, I had a very vivid recollection of one of Lorena's Texas adventures that I would like to record for the girls and to remember with Lorena.

  I grew up in the country and was around animals all my life, so I often forgot that Lorena was a city gal.  Not just any city gal but a MEXICAN city gal.  Life tends to be a bit different there in Tepic.  For example, I grew up with dogs as pets and work mates whereas Lorena grew up in at atmosphere where dogs tended to be kept solely for protection and as guards.  Consequently, I tend to view the normal dog as a drool gland [that powers a perpetually licking tongue and a permanently wagging tail] that is absolutely addicted to showing love and earning affection.  Lorena, on the other hand, views dogs as demonic beasts whose goal in life is, at the very best, to scare years off your life (and make you the subject of "Believe It Or Not" stories about bizarre people whose hair turns completely white in the span of a few minutes).  At the sanguinarily horrific worst, she thinks a dog's greatest desire in life is to chew off both your arms and your legs and then to chase you as you frantically try to escape on your stumps. 

  I have literally seen Lorena jump (screaming) in one bound, all the way across a street, from one sidewalk to the other, just because a dog, lurking unseen in a house or a garage like some psychotic Cujo, rushed the door or the gate barking like a Hound of Hell just as we were passing.  If I could somehow replicate this effect in competition, Lorena could have set a standing broad-jump record that might well never be bettered until we have, some day, Olympic competition on the moon with its lessened gravitational pull..

  So it was that Lorena and I set out from Jerome and Ruth's house with my mother one day to walk down across the pasture.  Actually, the companions on this quest were Lorena, my mother, me, and Jerome's dog.  It was a lovely spring day as we strolled through the wildflowers, talking and whistling.  The dog, by the way, did neither of those things.  It just stayed under our feet trying to beat us to death with its tail and lick us to death, all the while looking at us with that typical dog attitude that I grew up with of "You do like me, don't you?  Please like me!  I LOVE you!  Look how much I love you as I lick any exposed skin I can find and lash you lovingly with my tail!  See!  I even want to walk in your footprints that you are still standing in!  Please show me that you like me!" Of course, this isn't easy when you are walking...  Especially with Lorena.  Who had reached an uneasy truce with the dog but still cringed every time he fawningly approached her.

  Now don't allow yourself to be misled by the introduction to this story because the dog was innocent of any malice or mayhem.  In fact, the dog darned near became the victim of both malice and mayhem.  But that was only because of the cows.  But I haven't mentioned the cows yet, have I?  Please let me introduce those critters to you now. 

  Mom and Dad had longhorns.  These were not just longhorns.  No, these were LONGHORNS with LONG HORNS.  And sharp.  The kind that were designed to make wolf and coyote and big cat shishkebab.  The longhorns developed centuries ago in South Texas from cows that the Spaniards either lost physically or lost interest in when the owners began playing harps in heaven.  Indians, accidents, and disease were active heaven-recruiters at the time, so lots of longhorn ancestors were released to procreate and recreate and, thereby, create an animal that is tougher than death and not scared of the devil. 

  South Texas is a tough place to live.  Even with airconditioning, cold drinks, and big-screen HD TV -- none of which the longhorns had.  Consequently, they tend to be a mite moody and grumpy.  Nobody will ever confuse South Texas with Paradise (which is actually in North Texas just west of Sunset and Venus -- but that is another blog.)  Remember that Gen. Phil Sheridan himself was so enamored of Texas that he said, "If I owned hell and Texas, I would rent out Texas and live in hell."  Well, the longhorns didn't have a choice, so they are just a smidgen irascible, but they obviously have an excuse for their attitude.

  Thus it was that Lorena, Mom, and I -- and the dog that put "sic" in "sycophant" -- strolled leisurely through the meadows and woodlands on this lovely spring day.  Actually, if I remember correctly, we were bundled up rather snugly against a pretty bitter north wind as we tripped over and around rocks and cow pies and old barbed wire fences even while trying to dodge mesquite thorns, catclaw, briars, and a myriad of different kinds of cacti that lurked everywhere in ambuscade as I tried to convince a completely inconvincible Lorena that no rattlesnakes or copperheads would be stupid enough to be out in that kind of weather (which did not reflect well on us...)  For some reason, she was on edge just a bit...

  That was when, right out in the middle of nowhere, somewhere between rock and hard place, Mom's herd of longhorns heard us and deduced that supper had arrived and the last ones to reach us would be destined to starve to death.  Thus it was that a shocked Lorena stopped in her tracks, spun around, and discovered that a sizeable contingent of the Ghost Riders' in the Sky's herd was charging us -- or so it seemed to her.  She found herself in a reverse stampede in which the herd was rapidly closing the distance TO us.

  Whereupon we found ourselves inside a vivid lesson of Darwinian evolution, specifically in the chapter on Survival of the Fittest.  We had no feed, but longhorns should be from Missouri [the Show Me State] because they are so suspicious that you are holding food out on them that they have to search every nook and cranny, pocket and crease, before they will finally consider wandering away giving you looks of hurt and betrayal even as they search your every look and gesture, hoping to catch you with a cottonseed cube or some other delicacy that they somehow missed.  Or, at least, that is how it usually goes.

  However, this time, before the longhorns even had time to ascertain whether or not we were bearing bovine delicacies, THEY CAUGHT SIGHT OF THE DOG!!!!!  Immediately, all vestiges of domestication disappeared, and they reverted instantaneously to their savage ancestry and quite obviously became determined to eliminate the wolf-dog that threatened them.

  Poor dog was no wolf.  Poor dog was a pampered pup.  Furthermore, poor dog was no fool.  Poor dog was outnumbered a few thousand pounds to one, poor dog had little chance of successfully battling enraged longhorns with only a wagging tail and a promiscuous tongue, and poor dog knew it.  Poor dog was obviously a brilliant tactician, as well, who knew that retreat was the better part of valor.  However, there could be no retreat because before poor dog could get halfway out of the middle of nowhere, vindictive longhorns would have smeared poor dog paté all over the countryside.

  Thus it was that poor dog sought the only refuge it could.  Directly behind us.  And then the proverbial "all hell" broke loose.  Mom was determined to save poor dog at all costs.  Poor dog, now a whimpering, whining shadow of canine cowardice, was determined to keep our bodies, alive OR dead, between it and rampaging death masquerading as longhorns.  Longhorns were determined to eliminate the killer dog from the face of the earth.  I was torn between saving my dear mother or my darling wife (and facing the wrath of whichever felt scorned!)  Lorena was determined merely to survive.

  We, the entire kit and caboodle of bellowing longhorns, yelping dog, shouting mother, frantic Mexican wife [who was exhibiting a grasp of English words I did not even know she knew], and awestruck-totally-useless-man, went roiling and rolling in a vicious, viscous, tumultuous circle across the pasture like some apocalyptic battle scene out of the theater of the absurd.

  Mother was a true toreador, fending off slashing horns as she fought to stay between the devil's herd and the poor dog.  Lorena had seen a fence within sprinting distance, so she did.  I decided that Mom knew a little bit more about longhorns than Lorena did about crossing barbed wire fences, so I escorted (actually chased) her to the fence where I discovered that she needed absolutely no help scaling it like a veteran cowboy with a bunch of angry longhorns on his tail [all the while, remarkably, practicing her newfound English vocabulary.]

  By the time I turned back to help Mom, she had whacked enough tender longhorn noses and otherwise provided enough distraction for Poor Dog to go racing away toward home with his tail so far between his legs that he looked like he had a beard.  The herd of longhorns were now milling around Mom, begging for a cottonseed meal cube or some corn, like the most sedate, spoiled pets in the world.

  Lorena, though, would have none of it, so, instead of walking back home across the pasture, we had to take the long, circuitous route home along the road.  When we got home, Jerome and Ruth asked where we had been, saying Lorena looked as if she had seen a ghost.  I, of course, had to tell the story -- and have been telling it ever since.  Lorena just looked at me in a way that made me glad she did not have long horns... 

  Actually, we have had many, wonderful laughs about this little episode.  Mom died a few years later, and Lorena would often marvel at how she had faced those longhorns to save that dog.  I only wish that I could have faced Lorena's stroke that same way.  Rampaging longhorns hold no fear for me.  Strokes scare me horribly.  Lorena was deeply impressed with Mom's courage.  I am indescribably impressed with Lorena's courage and determination.  And I am so blessed to have had two such women in my life.

  • 9:09 pm
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