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Up From 34 Blues

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If there is one principle I am steadfast about, it’s that a man’s waist size should always be smaller than his inseam.  If your inseam is 36, and you wake up to find your waist is a 38, you have crossed the bridge into a contrary life.

My saddle partner, Jim Cornelius, met me for breakfast at The Gallery last week.  Sisters town, nine o’clock, a good crowd at the counter, and some tourists ensconced in their booths enthralled to see cowboy hats. There was a retired FBI agent among the Old Counter Guys who are there each morning.  He came over to visit because Jim knows everybody. The FBI guy investigated Rajneesh Puram and the Baghwan Shree Rajhneesh out at Antelope, Oregon, a few years back.  You may recall the freaks in purple robes and the Baghwan’s excellent collection of Mercedes Benzs, which he bought with money siphoned from the faithful — existential titheads from Van Nuys and Portland and Newark looking for transcendental salvation in the ramblings of a determined pothead.  They gave their money for enlightenment and he turned their daydreams into fine German engineering and a brace of Ak-47s.  Anyway, the Baghwan was this guy’s collar. The whole caper probably landed on his desk like a radioactive Mosler Safe.

I was a detective once:  you don’t really want that sort of case, but it’s hard to ignore when it lands in your cubicle.

Turns out, the G‑man was among the Old Counter Guys I’d written a column about some months ago. I was having eggs-over-medium in a booth and eavesdropping on their conversation about the weather and George Carlin.  I wrote about it because it was funny and because I love to write in diners, a place where jury instructions across the country are clear there is ZERO expectation of privacy.  The FBI guy called it spying.  Surveillance is a better term, but every G‑man I’ve ever known — and I’ve known lots of them — lets off a little flame from time to time, like a solar flare, or a gas-oil platform.

Jim and I talked about principles.  We wondered if they are fluid or if there are some that just can’t be compromised.  Jim thought they were ironclad.  I thought the law is gray.  We settled on consistency.  If principles were bound together with red Lok-Tite no one could ever sell a used car.  Or a horse.  Or storm the shores of Iwo Jima.  Or get married.  Or peddle a book on the internet.

That said, I’m up from a 34 and fitting better in a 35 these days.  George Strait Collection.  Cowboy Cut.  I’ve got one inch of principled inseam wiggle room left, which means I’d better leave the booze alone.  That’s harder to do all the time because life is almost always lived on an 0–2 count, and it’s harder than hell to lay off a good slider in the late innings when your team is down by a run.  And the local beer culture doesn’t help.  Drinking a “micro-brew” IPA is like eating an entire loaf of grandma’s sourdough. And, of course, alcohol metabolizes as sugar, which, in dessert terms, is a thick layer of icing on the cake of the human body.

Angry Frogs on the March

We are still waiting on spring.  Spring in central Oregon is a lot like the ubiquitous Ladyboys of Thailand, which means a tantalizing tease.  From a distance it’s easy to see a Ladyboy and think: that’s the hottest woman I have ever seen in  my life.  This is just undeniably true, and I’m not really interested in what generation of Raytheon Gaydar you’re running.  When a well-done Ladyboy leans over a balcony off the quay it is possible to be seized by Shakespearean passions.  Even up close it can be hard to know, which PFC Reineman, USMC Retired, discovered one evening in Phuket — much too late.  But the Ladyboys are dudes.  There is a wrench under the dress.  It’s important in these moments to think clearly and to keep walking inland, because there is a beautiful woman somewhere away from the water who awaits.  An actual woman who will do your laundry, cook your food, haul your ashes, and fulfill the kind of dreams adventurous men have been having since men first began adventuring.

Yesterday I worked up a sketch about the Basques.  And then, because the story seemed to demand it, I drank an entire bottle of Cabernet and went outside to fire up the tractor.  They advise against this in every manual involving machinery but smooth is fast, and running the bucket on a John Deere is an exercise in pure hydraulic ecstasy.  I threw some dirt around, cursing this vile spring, imagining scenarios where a million American men with small tractors converged on the capitol to protest something.  Anything. They do this in France because they haven’t forgotten the first major lesson of citizenship:  never trust the goddamn government.  A million French farmers will clog every road in sight and bring the EU to its knees at the slightest provocation.  Americans, on the other hand, are routinely punched on the button by our retail government and its minions, and retaliate by getting tattoos, vaping, or binge-watching television programs about grown men who think they are lizards, and women who pee in their own closets.

Our tractors are almost never put to their highest use.

When I was done playing in the dirt I saddled the colt. Because of the shit weather the horses have been parked for months.  This is bad for them and bad for me because I need to ride the way some people need to breathe.

I bought myself a new bosal for Christmas.  This is a ½ inch 8 plait — down from a 5/8, which means the colt is progressing and by the end of summer we’ll be down to a bosalita.  That’s provided I don’t succumb to chilblains, or kidney stones, or get run over by a housewife loaded up on ambien, down to the rims from running over spike strips in her Dodge Caravan, and fleeing from a shoplifting beef at Target.  I try not to worry but Notre Dame is burning to the ground and its hard to avoid that visual as a distinctly poignant metaphor.  Joan of Arc was beatified in there.  GI’s and Ernest Hemingway popped champagne corks in the transept when they liberated Paris from the Nazi’s.

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

I bought this fine new bosal on-line from Capriola’s in Elko, Nevada, because J.M. Capriola Company still sells actual tack made by actual Americans that actually works and won’t fall apart.  The factory kids in Shanghai have never made a headstall with Chicago screws that won’t back out.  And anyway, fuck them, they haven’t been a horse culture since the Great Khan rolled into town and took a giant shit on the emperor’s chest. Fact.

In the old days I would order gear from Capriola’s through the US Mail.  Out on the Fish Creek Ranch in Eureka, Nevada, I bought a Stormy Kromer and a pair of insulated gloves because the horseback winters on that desert were kicking my ass handily.  I never went to town because the only thing in Eureka is an old opera house.  So I tore off a page from the tattered catalog, circled what I wanted, and stuffed cash into the envelope.  I was cold all the time at Fish Creek.  I’d use an entire can of starting fluid to get the flatbed running in the morning, until the intake looked like the mustache of a besotted pistolero on a pants-down bender in Boquillas.  That was a cranky old bastard of a truck but it could carry an enormous load of hay out to the cows.  The hoarfrost on the barbed wire was so heavy it wrecked miles of fencing.

Fish Creek Ranch. Eureka, Nevada.

So I threw the kid up in his fancy new outfit, complete with a to-die-for salt and pepper mecate, and we went merrily trotting around the arena for an hour.  I was proud of him.  My spurs made jangly sounds.  He wanted to be ridden as badly as I wanted to ride and in the long layoff he’d forgotten exactly nothing.  Supple in his poll.  Soft in his turns.  Moving perfectly off my legs with just a hint of pressure.  Determined as a hornet.  That’s the kind of horse a guy thinks about when he’s idle under four feet of snow for months.  Exactly that kind of horse.

Incidentally, the world hasn’t seen any decent submariner action since the Royal Navy sank the General Belgrano back in ‘82.  323 souls gone down to Davey Jones from a three torpedo spread.  I’m tempted to ask: “For what?”, but then I think about 43 Commando yomping around in their rucks in Falklands weather, dodging badly aimed mortars, and the question answers itself.  Queen and Country.  And if it wasn’t just a simple principle it would be something else.  It’s what men do.

I’m working on the prison piece but there are snags.  What does it mean when prisons become a means to economic salvation?  Why do we keep producing so many felons?  Those are old questions endlessly recycled.  From the Egyptians onward these same questions have been batted back and forth like a shuttlecock.  The worst jails were probably Greek and could be smelled from miles away.  Today we call “The Hole” Administrative Segregation.  But it’s still a hole in the ground where we put human beings who won’t program.  My step-father worked in Ad-Seg for years and those stories blow the lid off of safe-spaces and crayon rooms, which is apparently the state of above-ground American higher education.

I’m in negotiations with the Public Information Officer of High Desert State Prison to get an interview with the warden.  The warden is terrified of journalists.  I’m not really that, precisely, but he’s obviously unnerved because we are two weeks into this kabuki.  The warden answers hard questions every day and I’m no threat, but he is also the dictator of his own city full of violent and predacious assholes, a desert eyesore made from 20,000 tons of concrete, 378 miles of electrical wire, and 7 miles of chain link fencing.  At night the prison can be seen from space.  A single dot of light in the desert darkness.  The warden can do what he wants.  4,000 inmates go to sleep every night on his watch.  And some of them would shoot you in the face and take your wallet for a smile.

The sun is shining right now but it shines in Antarctica too. Paris is winking into the evening with the ash of 800 years of important history raining down on the Île de la Cité. The timbers that framed the cathedral were thought to be some of the last remnants of the ancient European forests.  “Nothing will remain,” we are told.

The forecast here is for rain this afternoon.  Of course it is, but more importantly, I’m late to feed the horses and they are letting me know it.  Their whinnies bang off the side of the barn and carry through the trees.  The colt is kicking his water trough.  They are right.  Whatever it is they are thinking, they are 100% correct.  But I’m not alone.  The neighbor hasn’t fed his donkeys.  When the donkeys get pissed off it sounds like a family of sasquatches arguing somewhere in the woods.

Over the weekend a Cassowary killed some hapless fellow down in Florida.  A Cassowary is a hard-eyed dinosaur walking the earth with beautiful plumage.  They sport a five inch claw in the center of each foot.  They go for the soft tissue.  A Cassowary is a straight-line leading us back into the unequivocal nature of survival instinct.  There is no negotiation in their eyes.

I’ve got to go feed the horses.  I will get to my feet slowly.  I’ll find my balance that way and stand absolutely still for as long as it takes to level out.  Because, for one thing, I still refuse to accept the unbearable fact that Notre Dame is burning, and for another, I still can’t believe Sam Shepard is dead.

Craig Rullman

Craig Rullman

Craig Rullman is a writer, photographer, filmmaker, and occasional buckaroo. He is the author of The Bunkhouse Chronicles: Field Notes from the Figure 8 Ranch, and Director and Producer of a forthcoming documentary film -- The Outside Circle: A Movie of the Modern West.

Comments

  1. Thom Eley says

    Cassowaries are good tasting, however, freaking dangerous. I got to shoot a charging one in Papua New Guinea when I was out hunting deer. Bears often give you a chance, but cassowaries can come out of nowhere and you have little time. Bears and snakes, I don’t mind as long as I know they are there. Cassowaries, however, scare the crap out of me.

    Reply

  2. Cort Horner says

    Whiskey is an excellent, and lower calorie substitute for beer, if you’re looking to get back down to that 34…I still have some beer days in front of me, thanks to my gangliness and freakishly long inseam. Thank God for little blessings.

    Spring will come. In the meantime, I’m enjoying panning around for flakes in the semi-annual seasonal creek that runs near the house. I don’t ride, nor do I hunt cassowary but I am fairly adept at changing out the VVT sensor on a Subaru, tomorrow’s joyful task.

    I figured in the spirit of throwing darts all over the board, I’d join you today. It’s cleansing, and I’m glad I got to go through Notre Dame years back myself. I’ll take a pass on the Ladyboys though.

    Slanje.

    Reply

  3. Breaker Morant says

    [
    This winter I decided that (at age 52) it was time to start drinking Scotch. It will surprise no one that George MacDonald Fraser lead me to take this step. I drank one bottle this winter and started a second. It is really more of a “Dad” joke thing. I just put a splash in a glass when we watch movies or whatever and take small sips throughout the movie.

    Fraser says the right way to appreciate whiskey is to have a glass of Scotch and a glass of water and take alternate sips.

    My waist passed my inseam some time ago. Damn hershey candy bars-that is my addiction. Also, I do not have the amount of physical labor that I had 20 years ago.

    In my late 20’s, I used to use a twine string from a small square bale as a belt on the farm. Those days have passed.

    Reply

  4. lane batot says

    I have not the intellect to comprehend WHATTHAHECK that post was all about, but could relate to a coupla of the plethora of mentions–one is: I wonder if that Baghwan is the same Baghwan that was carrying on(just as lucratively) in Charlotte, N. C. back in the 80’s. He got busted for something underhanded, and a news headline proclaimed that the cops had “Bagged the Baghwan”. Amazing if it’s the same guy, migrated to the West coast and still carrying on after all these years!.….And as for Cassowaries–I’ve heard all the same things regarding them–they are not to be mucked with lightly! It is usually the males, which raise the offspring, that are so aggressively territorial. But I think all stay-at-home dads tend to be. Though I haven’t had Cassowary experience(yet–our zoo may get some in the future), I have been great pals with several emus(which sometimes also have rough reputations, but all the ones I took care of were sweethearts!), and now an Ostrich, which can also kill a full grown man quite easily, if it so desires. The present one I work with is a female, who supposedly hates men, people with long, flowing hair, and people that wear headbands. Of which I qualify in all three categories. But, for whatever reason, this ostrich LOVES me–even getting flirty with me at times! Our zoo vets were trying to decipher why, since I displayed all of her pet peeves, and they decided I was simply mental overload for this bird(which doesn’t really take a lot for an ostrich’s tiny brain), and her way to cope with such intense conflict was to just be friendly. I think it has to do with me giving her lots of treats, constant compliments on her beauty, and reminding her repeatedly in baby talk how she is my BESTEST girlfriend! As for how they taste–I can only vouch for the eggs of emus and ostriches. Emus eggs are quite rich, a lot like giant duck eggs in flavor, and one emu egg is the equivalent of 6 chicken eggs. Ostrich eggs, on the other hand, taste just like chicken eggs to me, and one ostrich egg is like a full dozen chicken embryos. That can make a heckuva filling omelet!!!

    Reply

    • Craig RullmanCraig Rullman says

      It isn’t necessary to comprehend the entire post. It’s doubtful that’s even possible. It was more of a blues riff, which I like to do from time to time, in my own way, to blow out the pipes. Think of the piece as a jug band on a street corner. Just banging on a few old buckets, tapping’ spoons, and making the neck of a clay jug sing. And don’t eat too many eggs, goddamn things’ll kill you.

      Reply

      • lane batot says

        HA! I may not perzackly comprehend it all, but I can still tell it is skillfully woven! Just as I can tell when basketwork is masterful, even if I have no ideer what the basket might be used for! I MUST get a copy of yer book(S?) one day.….And so some say about eggs(wink-wink)–other nutritionists are refuting that now. They ARE PERFECT, nearly nutritionally complete packages of protein, vitamins and minerals–so probably like most things–just don’t overdo–and no telling what THAT perzackly is! It sure would be easy to overdo with ratite eggs–one ostrich egg provides me with TWO full meals, ravenous eater as I am reputed to be!

        Reply

        • Craig RullmanCraig Rullman says

          In a few months the paradigm will shift. If eggs are good, they will be bad, and vice versa. Far better to enjoy our very brief runs on this earth for all they are worth.

          Reply

    • Paul McNameePaul McNamee says

      I suspect smarter birds love flattery. They are all about the plumage.

      The tom turkeys are strutting around the suburban office parks, allowing everyone to behold how handsome they are. So handsome.

      Reply

  6. John Cornelius says

    Loved the post. Comprehended most of it, enjoyed all of it. You should do this monthly, and call it Random Rullmanations. As always, RIR inspires me. My waist/inseam ratio has snuck into the bad zone — 36/34. My goal is to even that out by the time I go on a 7‑day long range fishing trip in mid-July. Should be do-able.
    Sorry to hear that Spring is dragging her feet in your area. I probably shouldn’t mention the 12 tomato plants that I am watching rapidly growing, or that 4 of them are “volunteers” from seeds that the squirrels scattered last season (we share our crop with them, involuntarily).
    Keep up the excellent work!

    Reply

  7. Eric Landkamer says

    I still say Beer is a conspiracy to make men “Old, Fat, and Slow. Just the way the govmint wants us. LOL! At 58 and I still go 30x34. Going for a 300+ dead lift on my birthday this spring. It’s hard work staying healthy, but worth every minute, and drop of sweat.

    Reply

  8. Greg Walker says

    Craig,

    Just read your post while listening to classical Steve Miller. “Time keeps on drifting into the future…”.

    Where my waist fluctuates between 38 and 36, depending on what brand of jeans I may be wearing, I take solace in the fact that my inseam (32) has not changed. I’m good with that.

    As I recall, the last time I “bellied up to the bar” was there in Sisters when Brother Jim played downtown and I was sitting with you. One beer. A very good beer. And much great music and conversation. A far cry from my much younger days in college up at the U of A in Fairbanks…or later in the 2/75th Ranger Battalion…or the one wild night at Stonehenge on the Columbia as a guest of the Outsiders MC at their yearly all-clubs run…or the one night in El Salvador at the Sands Motel where Brother Danny Gould pulled his .45 on a Salvadoran officer who had just shot one of the ladies of the night (apparently he was both drunk and jealous)…and so on.

    A cold beer now and then, or a shot of Wild Turkey (in honor of Colonel Charlie Beckwith, the founder of DELTA and a legend in Special Forces), suffices these days. As I close in on 66 years of life on this speck of a planet spinning in the far greater universe I value clarity more than ever before. 

    And the sad memories in context.

    Yes. Notre Dame. Taken by fire. No deaths that we know of. Twin Towers. Taken by fire. 3000+ murdered. El Mozote, a little village in El Salvador. 900 butchered by government forces, 500+ of those just kids. The village, too, taken by fire. Notre Dame will be rebuilt…the Twin Towers already have been…El Mozote, as well. Bricks and stone and wood can be replaced. People, not so much so.

    Prisons and all other symbols of absolute authority and power will always seek to avoid the inquiring mind. They have much to hide, as I have learned over the years.

    A fine post, Craig. Indeed, “blowing out the pipes”. I just returned from the coast yesterday. Walking alone along the shore with the pounding of the surf in my ears and the wind blowing the pup’s ears back as he plowed into its playful fray. My way of gaining a moment’s release of the madness that is so prevalent these days.

    And then, back on the Warrior Trail.

    “Until Valhalla!”

    Greg

    Reply

    • Breaker Morant says

      Greg says»>“Until Valhalla”«<

      Obviously, Greg has earned his way into Valhalla. Can those of us who didn’t serve, also hope for Valhalla? I have a long story on not serving that may come up elsewhere.

      On the other hand, my little understanding of Mormon theology is that you get your own planet. If that is the case, I would start with one commandment and go from there.

      1)Main-Stem dams are an abomination.

      Reply

      • lane batot says

        OF COURSE you can get accepted into Valhalla if you “didn’t serve” officially–there’s lots of ways to fight the good fight! I have my Me vs. the Motorbike Riders War; it lasted 7 years, but I finally won, only then to lose out during That Housing Development War. Then I won the Dog Pound war during college(took 5 years of gorilla tactics, though), and countless nocturnal raids against the crooked reservation bluecoats and administration officials. Conflicts with trappers, and surely the old Norse would enjoy my former Bigfoot perpetrations–they had their Grendel stories, right? All my many, many Halloween raids, and all the wild roamings and explorings I did, not to mention juvenile intertribal rivalries with other neighborhood gangs–looting and pillaging with impunity! Poaching trout, stealing chickens(all for bare minimal sustenance when forced onto the Reservation), and cain’t fergit the traditional Southern watermelon raids! But those guys havto accept the MANY dog spirits that will be accompanying me, or we’ll just go somewheres else!

        Reply

  9. Chrissy says

    Enjoyed this morning’s read. You’ve got quite a sense of humor emerging, Craig. And, of course, am with you in cursing this dragging Spring — Dreaming of saddle time too.

    Reply

  11. John M Roberts says

    At this moment I do not meet the precise legal/medical definition of sober. This post gives me the comforting knowledge that I am not alone. Let’s hoist another to the shade of once-beautiful Notre Dame. I can hear her proclaiming: Resurgam!

    Reply

  12. Ugly Hombre says

    “From a distance it’s easy to see a Ladyboy and think: that’s the hottest woman I have ever seen in my life. This is just undeniably true, and I’m not really interested in what generation of Raytheon Gaydar you’re running. When a well-done Ladyboy leans over a balcony off the quay it is possible to be seized by Shakespearean passions. Even up close it can be hard to know”

    Many strange weird things in this world- and a large portion of them are in Thailand (TITL) this is Thailand..

    I know a Burmese- Chinese- Thai girl- her dad was KMT in Burma, have been friends with her for years, a good egg, funny, cute and a good sport- weell all of a sudden- her sister tuned into her brother…a disturbing mega unusual sight- put me off my phad thai for a while I can tell ya..

    “A Cassowary killed some hapless fellow down in Florida” Those are dirty birds, they launch themselves at you like a 100 lb sabong manook with strapped on blades- a kind of a jumping front kick with 4 inch spike aimed at your underbelly- no bueno unreal..

    https://www.ozzyman.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/maxresdefault‑2.jpg

    There is a ostrich form in some methods of KF never could figure it out wth?? now I get it. lol

    Reply

  13. Chadimir Putin says

    34/34 motherfucker, which means if I gain another ounce I become an improper fraction. I think I’ll start wearing Capris and reject your traditional measures entirely.

    Reply

    • Craig RullmanCraig Rullman says

      Ha! Don’t just go in for capris, detective. Be sure to get the euro-version, seen often in-and-around the Central Coast, which have those sexy little tassels at the knee.

      Reply

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