When people come to my house for the first time they ask for my address so they can program it into their GPS. I don’t mess with all that stuff so I tell them, “Turn on such and such road and keep going until you come to the house with a herd of cows in the front yard.”
“You have cows in your front yard!” they always ask.
“Sure. I admit they aren’t real cows; instead of muscle and bone my cows are made from rebar and cement, red clay pottery and plastic. I even have a tall, mean lookin’ cowboy with a handlebar mustache to watch over them, although he hasn’t made any sudden moves in the 40 years we’ve lived here.”
I have one concrete cow that must weigh at least a couple hundred pounds that is so valuable that I chained her to a subterranean mass of concrete and steel. I did so because one Halloween night some hooligans were attempting to pilfer my best cow in the dark of night. Little did they know that my bedroom is not 20 yards from my prized concrete cow so I heard the strains and grunts of three would-be rustlers busting a gut as they tried to corral her. So I grabbed my menacing looking BB gun and went out on my porch where they couldn’t see me and told them in no uncertain terms, “No city dudes are gonna rustle my cow and if you don’t vamoose I’ll give every one of you a load of buckshot in your backside.” I also mentioned in my best John Wayne impression that, “The remedy for cattle rustling in these parts is hanging.”
I guess they took me seriously because they all turned tail and dove into the back of an already escaping pickup as they tried to steal away. Although I got their license plate number I didn’t call the cops because around here we tend to settle our own disputes. The word must have spread because in the ten years since then we haven’t had any further run-ins with poachers, rustlers or grifters.
Well, that last sentence isn’t entirely true because one low-life carefully wound his way through my herd and knocked on my front door. “What do you want?” I asked once again using my best John Wayne voice.
He mustered up his courage and asked me, “I was wondering if you’ve noticed lately that your electric bills are higher?”
“Listen pilgrim, around these parts you don’t go asking about another man’s business.”
“The reason I was asking is because the state of California is offering to give you free solar panels.”
“Is that right? You don’t see any of those gal-darn things on my roof do ya? If I wanted them don’t you think I’d already have them? And I don’t need the state paying for them either. What kind of racket are they runnin’ anyway? That’s what’s wrong with this state, they’re giving everything away. I tell ya, all those politicians in the state capitol belong in the hoosegow.”
That didn’t stop him from launching into a memorized spiel claiming that it was folks like me causing global warming and that my lifestyle was somehow causing natural disasters somewhere in Africa. Then he said we simply had to ban the internal combustion engine by 2035 and achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 or, “WE WERE ALL GONNA DIE.”
“Listen buddy-boy, I’m what you might call an accidental greenie. Me and Mrs. Pitts never had any bambinos scampering around the place so when we die that will be the end of the Pitts strain to which I belong. And if you and all your fellow generation XYZ’ers would follow our example that would end the climate change crises right there. That is what you wanted, right?”
Then I turned purple and said in what might be construed as a semi-violent manner, “So if I want to drive a car that you don’t plug in, live in a house without any Chinese made panels on my roof, eat beef from farting cattle and ride herd over my concrete cows that’s my business. Got it mister?”
That old boy was last seen running away with my herd of concrete cows in pursuit. I guess the climate around here didn’t agree with him.
