The Autumn of a Horse's Life

His name is Cowboy Spook, and he stands about sixteen hands high. But when I was on his back I felt like I was a mile off the ground. To those of you who don't understand "hands" in measuring a horse, a hand is about 4 inches, and Cowboy Spook stood six inches less than six feet tall--at the shoulder. But as a personality he stood a whole lot taller.

They say everyone who owns a horse or a dog has that once in a lifetime animal that is either perfect in every way, or very close to it. For the Cordovas, that is Cowboy Spook. He is a tobiano buckskin in color, a paint by breed. To those not in the horse world, that means a pinto horse whose darker coloring is somewhat that of a piece of deer hide. That's about as close as I can describe it, although the shades of buckskins vary widely.

I can still remember the moment I first laid eyes on Cowboy Spook. The very instant. I was with my wife at the Idaho State Fair, in Blackfoot. We always make our way first to the horse barns. We make our way slowly through, enjoying the four-legged friends everyone has brought out to show off. As I came upon Cowboy Spook's stall, I was stunned. I was speechless. Well, almost. And as you might have guessed, speechless is hard for me. I grabbed my wife and said, "DEBBIE!" That's all I could think of to say. Here stood this absolutely incredible animal, perfect from head to foot, more horse than most people will ever lay eyes on, much less ride. On his stall was his photo and the words "Cowboy Spook."

Of course I wasn't going to let this chance pass by. I had to know more about this incredible animal, the likes of which I had never seen. So I made the acquaintance of Caroline Cordova, the gracious lady who is Cowboy's friend and owner. And I couldn't help but become friends with her too.

In 2002, my wife and I, and our friend, Shoshone Indian Clyde Hall, met Caroline Cordova and her husband, Artie, in Mackay, Idaho, where they had Cowboy Spook at the local rodeo grounds. I was dressed in authentic Shoshone regalia, some of it actually from the 1800's, set to portray a white man living with the Indians in 1860's Idaho. We took five rolls of film of me riding Cowboy and standing beside him for a future book cover. He was every bit as incredible from above as he was from below.

And then the years slipped by. Cowboy stopped coming to see all his fans at the fair. Other, younger studs began to take over his work at the ranch. And then we learned this fall that Cowboy's health was failing. For years I had meant to go see him at his home in Challis. At last I knew that this was the year we had to make the trip.

Yesterday, Debbie and I and our 10-year-old son, Matthew, made our way on the most beautiful day since mid-May to the little Western town of Challis, Idaho. Entering this town is like taking a trip back 120 years in time. My kind of place. We drove to the Cordovas' ranch and visited for a while, and then Caroline took us out to see our friend.

Cowboy Spook was in a corral all alone. When I first laid eyes on him it was all I could do to hold back my tears of sadness. I walked to him and put my arms around his neck when he leaned his head down for me. The once powerful muscles were weak. His hip bones and ribs protroduded, and his joints were swollen. His mane and tail were lackluster and thin, and his hair was coarse and dull. It is written in the stars: this is Cowboy Spook's last autumn. He quite literally has reached the autumn of his life.

There is nothing harder to watch than a horse or a dog who has been your constant companion as they travel down that hard road that leads eventually to their "crossing over the Great Divide." For me, not having seen Cowboy in five years, it was a crushing blow to see him like this. He can't digest his food well anymore, he can't run and rear like he did. He can't carry a man as big as I. Cowboy's days on the prairie are over, as an old song says. And I could not be more sad.

Cowboy Spook was not only the Cordovas' once in a lifetime horse, but the once in a lifetime horse of a million other people as well. I have photographed, studied, befriended and ridden more horse than I could ever count. Yet never have I seen the equal of Cowboy Spook. Both in his incredibly friendly, loving and docile temperament, and in the beauty of his appearance and the smoothness of his ride. There will never be another Cowboy Spook. The day his old eyes glaze over and his heart stops beating, the horse world as a whole will lose a huge part of its heart too. There will never be another horse like Cowboy Spook.

Of Gentle Snow and Being Rich

Everyone expected, and with good reason, to wake up to the sight of the Three Tetons towering over our house, just outside the bedroom window. Instead, we woke up to giant snowflakes, falling gently, and four inches of white already decorating the railing of the deck.

Yellowstone, which had been just within our grasp, now might as well have been in far Siberia. The recorded road report on the phone confirmed this: Road after road after snow-clogged road—CLOSED. Will not open until Summer 2010. Something about that word, Two Thousand Ten, seemed so incredibly far in the future. I guess that’s how it is when you are a nostalgia buff. You relive the past a lot. It still does not seem like 2009, even as it prepares to come to a sliding stop among the powdery snows of another early winter.

So the snow was falling when I rolled over in our log bed and turned to gaze out the window beyond the deck, which is also made of logs. It was one of those friendly snows, friendly in more ways than one. First, because it was falling so gently, it was friendly to us, friendly to any brave soul out walking or riding, or whatever those brave souls do who love the winter. Second, friendly to skiers and snowboarders, I’m sure, although those two pursuits were the farthest things from my mind then and now. And third, the snowflakes were friendly to each other, it seemed, for it appeared that forty or fifty of them had joined hands and were coming down with the illusion of gargantuan flakes the size of cotton balls. They came with a flutter, unable to fall straight because of their strange, flat shapes, caught in and affected by the slightest shift of air. They eased down onto their comrades who had already come to rest, settling gently to leave plenty of air cushion in between. What appeared to be four inches of moisture was in reality probably more like an eighth of an inch, had it been rain.

I am put in mind of a similar circumstance, when I was traveling alone on a train from Geneva, Switzerland to Innsbruck, Austria. That time it was the magnificent Matterhorn I was looking forward to, a mountain which I believed they might have modeled the Grinch’s mountain after in the cartoon movie. In Geneva the weather had been gorgeous, the sun shining, the city aglow in the light of late November. But the day I got up to catch the train the clouds had slunk down over the Alps, everything lay in shades of gray and muted greens and yellows. As the train clacked on past at the top of the rise, I only knew the Matterhorn was there because like today, with the Tetons, I could feel this incredible presence, the sense that something huge and powerful and important is looming there, just within your grasp, but invisible. I rode on past the Matterhorn that day, and the only Matterhorn I will probably ever see is the Disneyland ride. The next day broke crisp and incredibly clear, incidentally, and the brilliant colored homes and shops of Innsbruck will be forever etched in my memory, there against the stark blue sky.

Now, here in this cedar home, with the world of gray outside and the chill that creeps in through every crack, only to be battled back by the fire in the fireplace, I am taken back to my childhood. There, in a place called Bear Canyon, my first vivid memories begin. The sun came up around noon in the winter, and it disappeared behind the spruce and fir forest sometime close to three o’clock, thanks to the confines of the canyon and its steep, forested sides. Since we moved away from there before I was old enough for school, my memories of that cabin in the woods of western Montana are all good, all made before young children are forced out into the cold to go to school, when your nostrils stick together, and it’s so cold it hurts to breathe. My memories were of building snowmen with Mom, lying on the sofa in front of a crackling fire, with a homemade afghan wrapped around me. Of watching Dad and the other kids come in after a long day, stomping their feet, complaining of the cold, while in my secure little world the cold affected me only if I invited it.

I remember heating water in a huge kettle—or what seemed huge back then—on top of the wood stove so we could have that weekly bath on Saturday nights. I remember hot chicken and dumplings, fresh venison cooked just right, in the early morning hours before daylight, when the house was normally haunted only by my early rising daddy, until his “little buddy” crept out of the covers for a bite. I think it was there, in those formative years, when I gained my love of fresh deer meat, which will always and forever be my choice of meats, just as it is for my own children.

The sun exploded onto the snow field behind the cabin once today, as I remember it doing all those years ago. I can’t help but compare it to a field of diamonds, because cliché or not that is indeed what it seemed to be. Especially when it was cold outside, as Bozeman, Montana, can get—very, VERY cold. Those coldest snowflakes seemed to rest on the surface of the snow field, more like huge flakes of frost than like actual snow, and when the sun would hit them at a glancing angle, they shone fiercely, boldly, and only disappeared when a child thought he could go out and pick them up and be rich.

But what is rich, after all? Is it money, a huge home, fancy cars and computers and big screen TV’s? Or is rich a cozy little house in a canyon in the mountains, a little home nestled below Mount Ellis, where the deer, the elk and moose, and the black bear roamed freely? Is rich being alone with a mother who loves you, wrapped in a blanket, reading a good book, or listening to the music of The Sons of the Pioneers, Marty Robbins or the Carpenters? Does being rich mean a huge hug from your daddy after he’s been gone for an eternity—or at least eight hours—away from his little buddy? Everyone has their own idea of rich, and I guess there are different kinds of rich.

Even as I type this, my beautiful wife lies here beside me napping from her morning’s labors, my belly is full from a big breakfast of pancakes and homemade huckleberry syrup, made from fruit we picked ourselves—as a family. I have a fine memory of the scent of bacon and eggs and pancakes wafting through the house. We are healthy, my kids are happy, and a copy of the Good Book rests here on the bed post above my head. Outside, the world could not be prettier. Although I am an autumn person, and I was not ready for snow, it is so beautiful I can’t be sad. And I swear to you, I am richer than a hundred sheiks. God is glorious, and so is life at the base of the Teton Range. Only the western Montana of the 1960’s could bring me closer to Heaven.

Utah Traffic

Okay, I know. Everyone has told me, and if they haven't they would ... if they knew I was about to write this. But I have always been the kind to jump in with both feet, and today is no different. I was going to write about modern pedestrians and crosswalks, but having just made a brief pilgrimage to Utah and back, during the peak of rush hour, AND just before a ballgame between the Brigham Young University and Utah State (I think), I changed my mind. How could I pass on such an opportunity while it's fresh in my mind?

So, where am I going with this. I am from Idaho, and if you are from Idaho or Utah you probably know of the friendly--and sometimes not-so-friendly--rivalry between the drivers of our two states. I haven't heard them, but I'm sure the jokes in Utah about Idaho drivers are just as nasty and low as the jokes about Utah drivers are in Idaho. With tongue firmly in cheek, I am about to venture into a territory from which there may be no return, and no forgiveness....

Friday evening. Five o'clock. Driving south on I-15 at Willard, Utah, heading for the bedroom community of Draper. Or at least I think it's a bedroom community. I've never seen any beds or bedrooms in any of them yet.

You can see where I'm going with this...if you're from northern Utah. Or maybe you can't. Maybe to you this kind of traffic is normal by now. But to a country bumpkin originally from the wilds of western Montana, traffic at 5:00 PM on a Friday in northern Utah is NOT normal. And anyone IN this traffic by choice cannot be normal either. I have to believe we were all road-ragers waiting for the spark to ignite us. Incidentally, I have to clarify one point, and to do that I'll take you back to one key word: "north." In speaking of Utah traffic, I am referring to north Utah, an entire different planet from the vast red deserts and open country of the southern half of the state.

On top of the normal problems of traffic in northern Utah, unbeknownst to me and my wife there was a game set to commence somewhere in the environs of Salt Lake City between BYU and Utah State. Umm... Apparently this is a big deal down there. Being a non-sports fan, I can't imagine the draw of driving for two solid hours in traffic I could outrun with one crippled leg and bunions. I mean, I would rather whack on my knees with a meat cleaver than spend that same enjoyable two hours again any time soon. But that was the biggest reason, I later learned, that the traffic on Interstate 15 traveled for thirty miles at speeds between 0 and 13 miles an hour, only once raging up to the top speed of 55, and that only for half a mile--as sort of a teaser.

Now, I have to question the intelligence of any police officer who would pull someone over in traffic like that, but they did. And what did these traffic stops accomplish? Generally, they made the ten mile an hour drivers slow to five or less. Wouldn't want to get a speeding ticket, after all. This would go for two miles or so, until we would pass said police officer and his hapless victim, at which point traffic would zoom off up to 13, or maybe even 15, miles an hour, just long enough to get our hopes up before dashing them again and bringing us back down to eight or ten miles an hour until we passed the next wreck or traffic stop. I can only say that I hope every traffic stop ended in the arrest of some deadly serial killer, child molester or IRS agent, because otherwise it only put undue strain on the traffic that was already strained to the point of cracking.

So how does a writer (and road rager in embryo) deal with such a situation? Well, of course he spends his time cursing under his breath and joyfully observing the faces of his fellow commuters. I was surprised at how few of them were talking on cell phones. I mean, generally a trip down the freeway will reveal two out of three in the middle of that pursuit. There they go, flying by me, all over two lanes of traffic, with a phone to their ear and a map stretched out over the steering wheel. Or better yet, a novel before them on the wheel--up high, of course, in case they need to look over it to see where their car is going. And in case you haven't done much freeway driving lately, please know this--I am NOT kidding about the novels.

Oh--back to those faces. Most of them seemed to be in a daze, staring with sheer boredom at the monotony of hundreds of vehicles behind, around and before them. Some were asleep. And sometimes their passengers were too. Some had crazed looks in their eyes, and I could imagine they probably had some automatic weapon in their lap, just waiting for the right moment to snap. I mean, there must be some kind of etiquette road ragers follow, right? A guidebook or something on "straws that will break the camel's back?" They can't expect all of us future road ragers just to go out and learn that stuff on our own, can they? Incidentally, I imagine to anyone who happened to come out of their own daze long enough to look at me I probably had the second face, with the wild but glazed over eyes of the road rager waiting to be born.

Well, it took us two hours to drive the fifty miles to the reunion to which my wife and I were bound. Luckily, we left home thinking we would have an extra hour and a half to find the location of the reunion. As it was, in spite of the traffic and the notorious so-called directions of MapQuest, we were only half an hour late. (And MapQuest is another blog in itself!)

I owe an apology to you if you are from northern Utah and you are arguing that the drivers I'm describing are nothing like you. I knew there was a good driver somewhere in northern Utah, and it must be you. Glad to meet you. Next time I'm passing through, please hold up your hand and wave, and give me a great big smile. Just don't honk your horn. I wouldn't want to road rage on the only good driver in northern Utah.

Photo of Our Free Puppy

Free Dog to Good Home

Open letter to all my friends on Facebook:

Friends, I have this dog that I need to find a nice home for as soon as possible. He is a cute little guy...after a fashion. Well, at least he's sleek and smooth, and his coat sure is pretty. And he has nice ears. Anyway, I bought him about a year ago, and he was okay when he was a puppy, but as he got older my wife started saying he was creeping her out a little bit. I haven't seen this, and I sort of have my doubts (but don't tell my wife I said that!), but she claims that he will sometimes just sit and stare at her. She says he doesn't even blink. And then she's trying to tell me he does it especially if she's getting dressed or is showering. I don't know. Sounds like a pretty wild imagination to me. But whatever... You can't fight the wife, can you? So having said all that, I will let this beautiful five hundred dollar animal go for free. He's had all his shots, he's wormed, and I'll let you have his collar and a bag of dog food too. Oh, and I'm going to post a photo of him on my next blog. You've got to check it out to see how cute he is. Thanks for looking. Oh yeah--He answers to Randy.



Okay, okay, okay. My blog tonight is a copout. Not only is it a copout, but it's an out and out plagiarism. :) Why am I admitting this, you ask? Because as sure as you're born someone out there who reads this will have already seen it on the Internet somewhere, and then I'll be sued and end up broke and making license plates in prison...or whatever they do in prison nowadays!

Anyway, because I had a drastic workout today, or more aptly put I had THREE drastic workouts today and some intense training on pretend fires in the drill tower, and also because I'm in the middle of a chapter of my new book and don't want to stop.... I'm bringing you this plagiarized, fake letter that was just so hilarious I can't help but share it with you tonight. I hope you get as good a laugh out of it as I did.

There's a Monkey Behind You

So it's 1998, and I'm driving down some lonely Texas road in the middle of nowhere. I'm on a book signing tour for 28 days straight, 13 states, 16 stores, and walking into every book store in every mall on the way, not to mention every stand alone store. I had my wife Debbie and our two oldest boys, Jake and Clay, along for the ride. Matthew wasn't born yet. At the time, Jake had just turned five and Clay was three.

So back to that lonely Texas road... I am driving my silver Caddy along, minding my own business, when a pickup goes by with something odd in the back. At least if you consider a loose, full-grown bengal tiger in the back of your pickup to be odd. Now, guys, I don't drink. I promise, I was stone cold sober when that tiger went by. At first I thought maybe I had been staring at road stripes too long, but when I looked in the rearview mirror I thought to myself, "Road stripes don't ride in the back of pickups." But neither do tigers! Well, at least they probably shouldn't.

To satisfy my own curiosity, which is vast, I slammed on the brakes and did a Dukes of Hazzard turn-around in the middle of the highway. My Caddy could go from zero to sixty in five seconds, or so it seemed, so it was no time before we were closing on the pickup. And the tiger. And it was most definitely a tiger. We found ourselves wondering what would happen if the guy had to stop for gas.

So anyway, I needed to head on to my next book signing and had no time to follow our tiger any farther, so we turned back around. But this is only the beginning of my story. I am not--incidentally--making any of this up--all fiction writing aside. This is a true story, and not even the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

As we continue driving down this lonely Texas road, I was needless to say slightly consternated when I look to my left and remark a full-grown giraffe walking leisurely down the fence line. No doubt looking for his tiger. Turns out the giraffe's name was Jake. No kidding.

After snapping a few shots of this giraffe which appeared to be running free in the wilds of Texas, we came upon a sign advertising "WILDLIFE SAFARI." That calmed us down a little, but of course we were intrigued enough that we pulled into this winding dirt lane and stopped at this rickety old building out in the middle of the chaparral. I can't remember what we paid for this safari that was to follow, but whatever it was it was worth it. There was a male ostrich that would eat right out of a bucket in your hands, but only the strongest people on the safari trailer were allowed to hold the bucket, because he could almost take it out of your hands with one peck. There was a huge bull bison that would eat grain right out of the palm of your hand--and leave this terrific green, frothy mush between your fingers in the process. Yeah. Real nice.

But that is as far as I'm going to share of our safari adventures, because the real adventure happened before the actual safari. See, we had to wait twenty minutes or so for the safari trailer to make its way back around to us, and in the meantime we were told there was a little zoo out back that we could peruse while we were waiting. With much excitement but little fanfare, we made our way back on a winding path to a smattering of sturdy cages. They were filled with all kinds of animals, the kind that are too small or too furtive to spot on a safari so are doomed to the fate of being locked up like dangerou felons for happy tourists to gawk at at take pictures of. I can't tell you, to be honest, what any of the animals in those cages were. Except for two of them.

These were spider monkeys.

There was a big black monkey and a smaller brown monkey. Male and female? I don't know. Just a wild guess. But they soon drew our attention, because they kept hanging their arms out the cage, clear up to their shoulders, with their fingers outstretched. They looked for all the world like scrawny little hairy funeral directors. And they truly looked like their feelings would be hurt if we didn't shake their hands. Honest.

Well, a glance around the place told us we were actually alone. Bad scenario. You see, I have always been an animal lover. Or should I say I've always had an interest in being close to animals. So this is a moment I just couldn't pass up. Like any polite person would have done, I extended my hand in greeting. And the spider monkey took it. She was very gentle, too. She gave my hand a little shake and seemed to know all the decorum required of a funeral director. She even gave me a sad little nod and a tilt of her head, as if extending her condolences through this much practiced expression.

Like father like son. Yeah, I know, I'm an idiot. But when Jake started jumping up and down saying he wanted to shake hands too, what could I do? I held him up to the cage, and the little brown monkey shook his hand gently but firmly and told him with his eyes how sorry he was for Jacob and his loss. Yeah, whatever. Now, for the good part. There was no way on this green earth that Debbie was going to shake that monkey's hand. Shoot, who knows where a monkey's hand has been? Well, actually, we probably all knew where that monkey's hand had been, which made Debbie about the only intelligent person in that zoo at the moment. But Clay, now, he just HAD to shake that hand. So like the doting dad, I picked Clay up and held him out....to his doom.

In Debbie's defense, she was running a video camera at the time, and she couldn't very well fly to Clay's rescue as we all know she would have. In the moments that followed, all monkey heck broke loose. Clay's hand was taken in greeting, but unfortunately, Clay being more the size of the monkeys, they decided they would either adopt him or have him for dinner. We never found out which. The monkey's other hand shot out of the cage, and it grabbed Clay by his upper arm and started pulling him into the cage. I had to grab it's hand and jerk it loose and shoved it back into the cage, pulling Clay away with my other hand while he screamed in horror. But not as much horror as the monkey, robbed of its new toy. That monkey raised the demons from below, I swear. It started screaming in the most blood curdling cry you've ever heard, and needless to say we slunk away from there in horror, hoping we could vanish from the zoo before the owners showed up to see what the ruckus was about.

But the story doesn't end here. After leaving the maniac funeral director monkey and Jake the giraffe, we headed out to finish the rest of our tour. By this point, the boys were really tired of book stores and malls, and it took a lot of work to get them to walk fast so we could move on to the next store. So, because Clay was so afraid of monkeys now, if he was dallying, all we had to do was say, "Come on, Clay, there's a monkey behind you." Usually without even looking back he would come running to us. Even when he did look back and saw no monkey, he still kept running each time the ploy was used.

As all good ploys, however, this one was overused, and in the end it was almost my demise. We had been using the "monkey behind you" scare tactic to hurry Clay up for three days when we stopped in a Dallas mall and hit up Waldenbooks with our usual spiel about buying my books. We had an appointment for a book signing after that, so we were in a big hurry to get out and get to the next mall. But Clay was dragging his feet like nobody's business. He was tired, hungry, and hot, and he was fed up with malls. But he was still afraid of monkeys.

If I had looked back at Clay the next moments would not have been so traumatic. But I hadn't. I just glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, realized he was dallying, and uttered the same by now brainless comment, "Look out, Clay, there's a monkey behind you."

As I finished speaking, to check on the effect my statement had on my three-year-old, I turned and looked at him. There, directly behind my son, was a black man. He appeared to be about 6' 6" and three hundred fifty pounds. To say my heart leaped into my throat was putting it mildly. Clay run to me, thinking this time a monkey really was behind him, and I stood there in shock, thinking I was about to be pounded into the ground. To end the story abruptly, it turned out this guy was engrossed in some other thought and haven't even heard me. But I learned that day to look before I leaped, and I also stopped telling Clay there were monkeys behind him.

Incidentally, there were crowded malls along our route where not one white person was in sight. But we quickly became very relaxed, particularly in Texas, where what appeared to be entire gangs of black men would stop to chat with us and see where we were from, just as friendly as can be. Other than the spider monkey, everyone we met in Texas was pretty friendly. Well, and maybe she was too. A little TOO friendly for Clay's liking.

So if you ever get a chance to shake hands with a monkey, just think where that monkey's hand has been and pass on that opportunity. And whatever you do, if anyone says there's a monkey behind you--RUN!!!!

Is It Creek or Is It Crick?

Thanks to my friend Stephanie, the majority of this blog is going to be one thing: a poem. Folks, I love Idaho, but I'm originally from Montana. I have also lived in Virginia. In both places I was too young to pay much attention to how the locals talked. Most of my manner of speaking, including the words I use, came from my own family. My father was basically an eight year college student by the time I was born. He was forty-five years old and set in his ways. He was also set in the way he spoke, and for the most part it was in very correct, although not "stilted," English. Perhaps it is for that reason that when little Steph asked me if I was a "real Idaho boy," the test consisting of whether I pronounce a stream of water "creek" or "crick," I was able to firmly say, "CREEK!!!!!"

When I first met my wife in 1986 we went for an 18 mile hike with my dogs. Of course, it was only supposed to be an 8 mile walk, before I got lost. The fact that she never complained was the biggest reason we kept dating. I figured if she was tougher than I was she was definitely one to hang on to. That fact has been proven time and again throughout our lives. Unfortunately, we started on slightly rocky ground at the beginning of our hike when Debbie made the mistake of mentioning the "crick" we were walking past. I started into a teasing stretch that went on and on, and eventually led to the poem that follows. After I read this poem to Debbie, she stopped being an Idaho girl, at least in the sense of passing Stephanie's test. I have never once heard her say crick again. See? Some folks really can learn new things at the advanced age of 22!

So, with no further ado, here is the poem inspired by my Debbie and thrown into this blog because of Stephanie's "Idaho test." I hope you enjoy.

Down on the Crick

There’s a little word I’ve heard around that needs an explanation;
I have a feeling there’s no place for it in grand oration.
Now listen to me very close and see if you agree;
By the way it’s spelled, it’s not quite said the way it ought to be.
If you’ll sit there for a while, I’ll teach to you a lesson;
And if you’re guilty of this crime, I hope you’ll be confessin’:
The simple word I’m speaking of I think is pronounced crick;
But it’s not spelled that way, and I’d like to know the trick.
This word should have a long E sound, like bee or tree or beagle;
Can pronouncing such a word as "crick" somehow be illegal?
I guess if it’s tradition, to call a "creek" a "crick,"
I’ll go become a vagabond, living on Pike’s Pick.
Or I’ll become a shipherder, herding ship along the hill;
Or sick my fortune in the mines, like a wick man never will.
And if someday I’m lucky, a pretty girl I’ll mit,
And she’ll fold up my underwear so very nice and nit.
And we’ll buy us a great big farm, if they’ll give us a good dill;
Then I’ll have all I ever want without the need to still.
I’ll plant my whit out in the field, and what I sow I’ll rip;
So I can go and buy another couple thousand ship.
We’ll take those ship, so soft and fat, and also very mick,
And shave the wool right off their backs, forgetting how they rick.
’Cause smell don’t bother me at all, when my fortune I am sicking;
I’ll have chickens with their bicks plumb full, and my luck will still be picking.
My best friend’s named Ezekial, but we just call him Zick;
The other day I caught him in the john, about to take a lick.
I was so embarrassed, I ran right to my bed,
I jumped right in and pulled the dirty shi— whoops! blankets over my head.
And this morning I was standing here, frying some eggs in griss,
When my wife comes in, tired of fighting, wanting to make pi— uh, make a truce.
Then we decided to shear our ship, and go into town with their fliss,
And sell it off, then go to the bank, so we could pay our liss.
Well, there’s not much more to say I s’pose, you’ve got my drift by now;
I nid to get back to the barn and milk that bawling cow.
Now go and think on this a mite—take six days, or a wick—
Then tell me how you say it—is it creek or is it crick?

—Kirby Jonas June 1, 1995