OPINION? EVERYBODY HAS ONE: Why cook for yourself when someone else has cooked for you?

— My close relative left yesterday to go to her cousin’s place for a few days. I have lots of meat loaf, two pies and lunch meat for grazing until she comes home.

She is pretty good about keeping me fed, but sometimes I’d sorta like to cook up something for myself.

I love this weather. We do need some rain, but I could stay out sixteen hours at a lick if I didn’t get hungry. I finished the chores and came in to eat me a lunch-meat sandwich about one. I missed the news and weather, so I figured on going on out to the barn and checking on the inventory of feed and minerals. I was putting the pie up and saw a sack of butter beans in the pantry.

Butter beans are so good when you cook them with about a cup of cow butter or half a ham. I checked out the freezer for ham and, finding none, chose to use the butter. I washed the beans and got them to cooking on slow, and before you could count to a hundred, they were smelling real good.

The phone rang and it was a neighbor on the north side of the rent place and he thought I had cattle out. The highway wasn’t even paved when I moved here but now it is a major route.Trucks and cars whiz up and down like they were running from an invasion of water moccasins. I knew I’d best get there in a hurry to prevent an accident. I asked the feller to try to keep the cattle off the road, but he is from way up north and only said he would try.

It is about four miles to the place from headquarters and I made it pretty fast. Sure enough, there were cattle out and the feller was keeping them in the ditch. They were the milk cows from the dairy up toward town. All of them were gentle as could be, munching the tender blades of new grass and having a good time. We quietly drove the marauding herd home. They filed into the lot like little puppies, and we shut the gate and visited awhile.

I like the newcomers around here. They bring stories about boats and stranger things than that, talk funny and are basically real decent folks. I know they don’t understand our ways, but I can’t hold that against them; I sure don’t understand theirs!

I tootled back home, enjoying the warm air and the sunshine on my face. Old Dog was happy as he could be. He figured he had done all the work herding that bunch of cows, and his bonesdon’t ache so much in the warm seasons. We were right proud of ourselves and I reckoned we had a right to be.

Now you have already figured that I was in trouble. I wish I could just apply my brain when I need to and not cause myself so much grief. Sure enough, I forgot all about the pot of butter beans cooking on the stove and it must have been a good hour and a half that I was gone. I could have been back sooner, but do you think I ever pass up a chance to stop and talk? Course not!

The house was still standing, no fire trucks were around and I began to hope the worst had not happened. Maybe I had put enough water in the pot and turned it down low enough to save the day. Well, I hadn’t, and I didn’t save the day!

It is my opinion, and everyone has one, a feller that has had food cooked up for his meal should not get so uppity and think he needs to cook something else. By all means, never use your close relative’s favorite red cookware to cook in. And never, ever call on a female offspring to help clean up the mess because you know she is gonna tell it all over the county!

I went to the big box store and bought some stuff to deodorize the house, and I am praying hard that it works; bean stench is powerful!

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

Opinion, Pages 5 on 03/14/2012