OPINION? EVERYBODY HAS ONE: A cattleman should not be sequestered in the house for house cleaning

A cold and wet morning after such warm lovely weather just makes me have aches and chills.

I waited out the heavy shower this morning and finally got my rain suit out and on. I would have thought it was below freezing had I not known better. My body is trying to force spring, I reckon.

I drove around the pasture and all looked well, so I got myself back to headquarters in record time. My close relative fixed another pot of good coffee and I settled in for a day of TV and rest. I didn’t rightly know what to tune in so I ran the channels looking for a news show or something besides the silly stuff. I finally found RFD TV and selected it. It was pretty good, but that program only lasted about five minutes.

For the next 30 minutes it was a feller telling us how to train horses the way they do it down under. I switched to one of those news-by-the-bushel channels and was flooded with the stories of cops chasing a car down some highway in California. The news helicopters were right in the way; they were taking up space the police copters should have been in. I got tired of that pretty quick.

I turned off the TV and took a stroll around the house, looking out the windows and being thankful for the rain. My close relative was busy dusting and drug out the vacuum cleaner as I sat back down in my chair. She looked at me with that raised eyebrow that carries a threat of death, so I removed myself to the kitchen. I got the paper that was folded neatly on the cabinet and proceeded to undo it.

I read the front, back and all the interior pages, even the sports page. I stared in amazement that so many people can seem to understand the English used in those sports writers’ columns. A hot whizzer, now what is that? I guess I figured it out, but that doesn’t mean I liked the terminology.

I suppose the floor cleaning had been completed as my close relative dashed into the kitchen, saw the paper sorta spread out and began to repair the damage in no uncertain terms. What in the world is a paper for if not to read was my question, and her reply was something like real folks don’t have to shred or disassemble a daily paper to read it!

It is my opinion, and everyone has one, a cattleman should not be sequestered in the house on such a wonderful day for house cleaning! A true keeper of the land would be out in the shop grinding axe blades or oiling tractors or something.

Maybe a trip to the coffee emporium could be the answer. As some of the Grands would say, “Just move it, move it!”

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

Opinion, Pages 4 on 04/10/2013