OPINION? Everybody Has One!!

— Four times in the last three months I have had to haul off a dead bovine. This is beginning to be costly; well, it is already costly. First it was the one old cow that didn't make the process of calving, then two lung damaged calves that had pneumonia during some very wet and cold weather and now a lightning struck heifer.

I count my blessings that there weren't eight or ten head under the tree that got hit last week by the fiery blaze. I lost six a few years back like that and all of them big and springing. I have talked and talked to them about standing under trees in a lightning storm and they just won't listen! Go figure!

That is not the worst of my weekly tragic nightmare. No sir, we need new tires for the trucks, hay and dump, my old George Strait pickup is about to roll over on a hundred and eighty thousand and the male offspring said he didn't think the baler would make the fall cutting, if there is one. Have you priced a baler lately? Reminds me of the news item years ago about the army paying $50,000 for a toilet seat.

Don't blame the implement dealers or the tire dealers either. I know the CEOs of those manufacturing companies are racking up big retirement accounts and we are all suffering for it. The dealers are in a bind same as us that are forced to deal out the dough or retire on the cuff of the Government.

Speaking of suffering, did anyone besides me notice that our economy didn't go down real bad until the price of gasoline hit the sky? Working folks couldn't afford todrive to work and then make a house payment. Seems sensible to me, but I am not a rocket scientist. Some feller tried to explain that the hurricanes ripped up the refineries so bad that the oil companies had to increase the price to repair but I don't buy that. They are getting richer off of the general public, otherwise old John Doe could afford his own insurance!

Yes, you are now in a foul frame of mind, thanks to my dark and dreary prose, but think this through before you jump on any bandwagon. We are supposed to be a God fearing, neighbor loving and work brittle nation, ready to fight for the rights of our countrymen and women. We defend our shores with much blood letting and never blink, but we also allow some to kill our economy. What is up with that?

My close relative has written a check every three months for many years to pay for the insurance on trucks, cars, wells, houses and, finally, health policies. I could have bought two bulls last week in Alabama with all that money!

It is my opinion, and everyone has one, we had better start looking for the right weed to pull before we let the garden get swallowed up and wasted. I have ridden to town horseback and I'd prefer not to go back to that but how I wish I could stop using the oil products. We had better think as hard about the start and finish of this deal as we ever have any problem.

Thanks for the soapbox. Maybe you think I'm so funny, you got a good laugh!

Opinion, Pages 4 on 08/19/2009