OPINION? Everybody Has One!!

GRAVETTE — My poor old hide is just yearning for some solar heat. I need a good hot day and fence to build. That would probably warm me up considerably. For one of the few times in my life I feel sorry for the Yankees up there in the northeast. They have been dealt a bad hand of weather for several weeks. I suppose we, or at least me, shouldn’t gripe so much.

I can tell you one good thing about cold weather. My close relative likes to build big pots of chili.We could never have too much of that wonderful rib-sticking food. We did run out of peppers before the snow subsided enough to make a trip to the getting place, but I can eat it without any enhancements. We are back to meat and taters with a ton of salad chopped and diced every day. I’d almost rather have a snow! I know the ends of my ears are turning green from all the fodder.

Cattle are down and fat cattle aren’t so hot either. I wish there was an easy way to make it in the cattle business, just make it, not wishing for riches, just what it takes to feed the old hides. We have grazed everything down pretty close and are still feeding hay. I pour out enough liquid gold, feed cubes, to make up for the lack of protein inthe hay and the feed store rolls out the red carpet for me when they see me coming. Course, I have to remove my muddy boots to walk on it.

I sat down with the members at the coffee emporium this morning and listened for awhile. They were all blown up with the government and all the gossip about their favorite sports heroes. Jeff, being one of the sons of Ben of Ben’s Barbeque Bunkhouse, was lamentinglouder than the rest about the blight settling upon golf, his favorite sport. The rest of us members can’t really afford caddy, cart, clubs and checkered pants. We just listened as Jeff whined.

Now I was wondering why there was a blight settling anywhere. I may be wrong about this but I think some of the fellers who play that game have created some bad situations for themselves, but what did playing golf have to do with it? I sure wouldn’t want to mean mouth rodeo if a cowboy got himself in trouble. Just don’t understand some things, I guess. I figure the way some worship, from afar, the best players is sorta strange. Don’t take that wrong. I don’t mind. It is no skin off my nose, but it seems strangeto me.

It is my opinion, and everyone has one, the heroes of life are not the ones who play. Did you get that? The men who play at games, you know, games that you play, are not the fellers we should be paying homage to, anyhow. How about that guy who sits up on a tower and directs the jet plane your kid is on as he lands safely? I sorta admire the grocery store manager who stays open to seven even if just one or two folks need bread or milk. The giants of life might be the ones who repair electric lines in blizzards, scrape highways so an ambulance can rescue a farmer who has great need and many more common everyday people. I like that nurse who kept a cool cloth on my Pappy’s forehead as he drifted off to heaven. Sheis a hero.

Thanks for your time. You, too, may be a hero!

-Bill

Bill is a pen name used by the Gravette author of this weekly column.