Writin' Cowboy Poetry

The genre of cowboy poetry has been around for quite awhile and can also be heard in the ballads the drovers sang to calm the nerves of their cowherds. There has been a lot of "bad" poetry written, but some is very good. I try my hand at it occasionally, but I don't know if it's good or bad. Whatever, it sure is fun to write. Here's one of my creations in my usual seven-syllable line:

A man had to make his choice:
roll-your-own or tailor-made.
There was certain craftsmanship
in a man's ability
to take cigarette paper,
furrow it just right, shake flakes
of Bull Durham from the bag
(which featured the well-known tag),
curl one edge of the paper
under and roll the other
over; then with a quick lick
seal that tube for good measure.

To take the craft another
step, he'd reach into his pants
to extract a kitchen match
and with a flint-thick thumb nail
scratch it to a plume of fire.
Then in his double-cupped hands
he'd ignite his creation
- even in a gusty wind -
for a few puffs of pleasure.
Copyright/Lynn Bueling

P.S. No posts will be made next week on this blogsite. I'm going to Branson, MO for some entertainment.

The News

Leave it to news items to keep a man interested and entertained. It's almost amusing how spin-meisters are making a Catholic priest responsible for a congressman's "loving up" the young male congressional aides. I guess he doesn't have a brain, or maybe it's just located in a different part of his anatomy.

Barack Obama voted against going into Iraq. Other potential candidates say they were misled or duped when they voted to go in. Barack might be young, but he's principled.

Rush Limbaugh shamefully made fun of Michael J. Fox for exhibiting his uncontrollable body movements caused by Parkinson's Disease because he purposefully went off his meds. To many of us, Fox's action demonstrated just how debilitating a disease it is.

What's the 700 mile fence on the Mexican border going to do about the millions of illegals already here, insure that they stay here for a cheap labor supply? If others want in they'll go 701 miles.

We should be able to twist China's arm to discipline North Korea. How much business do we do with their budding capitalist notions through Wal-Mart, et al.

Brazil will soon be 100% energy independent with their emphasis on renewable resources. We've had an energy crunch before. How come we never followed Brazil's lead. Do the boys at Exxon and other oil bigs know anything about it?

Well, it is all entertaining, and we could all have a good laugh over it --- if it weren't so darn serious.

How Things Add Up

The notes in my journal from a while back say I thought I needed to go out and live my life before I could sit down to write about it. That's the angle I'm coming from with all these web logs. I'm the first to admit I haven't reached or deserved any level of fame, but whenever I begin writing I recognize my past in the ways I see and interpret my world.

I found validation for this in a recent magazine article featuring the noted songwriter Kris Kristofferson. He said, "Do it before you write about it." He has been a Rhodes Scholar, boxer, helicopter pilot, janitor, etc. and feels his experiences are of high importance to his writing career.

I can count many life experiences, some life changing, some enhancing, some damaging, but whatever experiences I have accumulated in 6 1/2 decades, they have accompanied me to this threshold I stand on, beyond which lies the rest of my life. They color and shape my way of thinking and make me the man that I am.

Grandpa's Bible

Grandpa Sandvig fought on the battlefields of France during World War I and received the Purple Heart medal for the wound in his leg. I know little of those experiences since he maintained the typical veteran's stoicism in relating the horrors of warfare. He did something, though, that speaks to me through almost a century of time and lets me share some of his thoughts; he carried a New Testament and wrote brief journal entries in the blank end pages.

His first entry: "Sept 20, 1918 - Today we are just a few miles from the Hun lines." He arrived in France on July 6 as a private in the 91st Division. History books told me they stood in reserve in the major offensive battle of St. Mihiel on September 11-13.

"Sept 21st..." He had started to write but no more words came that day. Was he thinking about the the wife and son left behind in North Dakota?

"Sept 26, 1918 - 6 in the morning. We started the Drive. About 20 km west of Verdun and we were in 17 days and lost have to..." He never finished his thought, but it was a drive, indeed. The famous soldier George C. Marshall wrote that on the morning of September 26, the attack was launched after a furious bombardment of more than three hours. Fighting continued without interruption through September 27 and 28. General of the Army Pershing wrote that the 91st Division overcame strong initial resistance and advanced rapidly and said the Meuse-Argonne battle was "the greatest, most prolonged in American history." Grandpa found himself in the middle of this.

"Oct 17, 1918 - I went to the hospital. was there but to Wed. and one week in the concourt...from there I went to Very to the Casul (most likely casualty) Camp. was there for 7 weeks. From there I went to my Co. Got back on 4 day, January, 1919."

The words in that Bible are fading fast; they seem harder to read each time I open it, but we have salvaged something of his wartime experiences. History books tell me the rest.

My Little Valley

Three paint horses graze in a small pasture below the hill where I live. Their presence is eye candy to contrast with the traffic speeding beside them. In this little valley where the Heart River flows into the Missouri, more natural beauty exists.

Many a summer night while sleeping under the open window, I have been awakened by the yipping and gamboling of a coyote litter braving open space in the moonlight. Deer tracks appear in Mary's gardens, and on occasion a big antlered visitor stood watching before melting into the wooded draw. Pheasants scratch the ground, then fly into the trees to crow in the foggy morning air. Rabbits eat tender leaves in the flower beds, an act of sacrilege which causes quite an uproar when spotted from behind the kitchen window. And then, there are the wild turkeys...

Co-existing with the paint horses, a flock of maybe two dozen turkeys roosts in the cottonwoods above them, scratches bales open in the hay meadow beside them, and, at will, slowly marches across the road causing cars to stop for them. The story of a clumsy flight resulting in one's crashing into and shattering a windshield has been told. Wild turkeys can be compared to weeds growing in a wheat field, but they beg attention when strutting fully fan-tailed to entertain the females in the group.

Little does it matter how hard developers try to squeeze one more house into the landscape. The birds and animals find a way to live on the land in spite of them.

We Need All This Stuff?

On occasion I'll take a look around and wonder why we acquired all these "things." The closets bulge, the garage swells, bookshelves sag, and the shop groans. Having yard sales occasionally or donating to church rummage sales does little good. In a month or two all the storage space is full again. In fact, we often attend those sales and buy other people's cast-offs. There I was yesterday buying books at the library sale, and apparently not having enough, I went back there this morning and bought three more. I mean a good deal is a good deal.

Antique value drives a lot of the collecting. At various sales I've often heard a naive, prospective buyer ask, "What do you think this is worth?" Experience tells me it's only worth what you can sucker someone else into giving for it. In our community a multi-level antique store operates in a co-op format where many people can display their treasures and offer them for sale. None of it seems to be worth much since the display changes little.

And that's just so-called collectible stuff. When I drive through my neighborhood or any other there sit by many houses motorcycles, campers, boats, snowmobiles, and cars in front, beside, behind, and inside. Does the one with the most stuff when he dies win? I've heard two different clergymen relate the story that never when they have buried someone have they ever seen a hearse pull up to a gravesite with a U-haul hooked befind.

The Book Sale

A lot of people wait for this day. Count me in that group. The semi-annual used book sale at the public library draws us like rusty nails to a magnet. They advertise 40,000 volumes for sale, but I doubt that anyone's counted. Their estimate does it justice, though. A volunteer group called "Friends of the Library" works hard at collecting donated books and sorting them into categories for us to peruse.

The price is right - $1.oo per pound for paperbacks and .50 for hard covers. Most shoppers carry out bags full. I did. It totalled just $12. I gravitate to certain sections such as poetry, biography, history, and music. I don't have much time for the huge fiction section since I want real meat. (My wife would stand and argue with me on that one.)

I did it. I just had to go back this afternoon. Yes, I bought another $6.75 worth. There's a good chance I'll return one more time tomorrow. As I finish writing I plan to start studying my music books first to see if there are some easy tunes for me and my guitar. Adios.

Global Warming

A catchy phrase circulated a few years ago, the gist of it being when you want different results you can't keep doing the same things over and over. From there it's an easy leap to the topic of global warming. North Dakota's coal reserves are enormous; it's estimated to be hundreds of years' worth, and they're not even using much of it because it's relatively low grade. Twenty trains bearing Wyoming and Montana coal each day pass through Bismarck-Mandan headed to points east. North Dakota's mines fuel generating plants built in-state.

A recent AP article stated that 154 new coal-fired plants are being planned in 42 states. Coal generated electricity amounts to feeding over half of the U. S. demand. It follows to the skeptic that we don't show much concern for the environment. Oh, yes, we're told new technology exists for "scrubbing" a plant's exhaust to eliminate pollutants.

My life's experience tells me this - big business tells lies as badly as does big government and is just as guilty of the sins of commission and omission. Even if I'm in error and new plants can clean their exhaust, how can countries with emerging economies such as China and India quickly install and operate that technology?

Al Gore's recent movie regarding global warming received media attention for only a short while. Then the reporters' energy focused on other topics after they tired of this environmental issue. Meanwhile the ice continues to melt.

World Class Athletes

A world class athlete lives in our midst in the Mandan area who has brought a lot of attention to the community while building quite a reputation for himself. As a professional he earned lots of money before he retired from the applause of the crowds and was put out to pasture, literally put out to pasture because he's the famous rodeo bull Little Yellow Jacket. A baseball player does well to bat over .300 in his career; this bull averaged well over .800 and in sum total worked just over eight minutes at his craft. He is said to be well cared for in retirement and is brought out as the celebrity he is at various community events.

Another animal athlete worthy of note was the gelding Tipperary, a bucking horse foaled in South Dakota in 1905. He interested me enough that I researched his life, wrote a long biographical poem in unrhymed blank verse, and performed it at the annual Dakota Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Medora in 1905. About 90 documented riders tried their luck at riding him, and, of them, there is only one undisputed ride. There were a couple of others, but they were of questionable success. His complete story is too long to tell here, but it was the end of his life that touched me. Here is the last section of that poem:

I heard my namesake song Tipperary
one last time when they took me to Belle Fourche
to parade me in front of the grandstand
where I'd sold thousands of tickets in past
contests. I walked slowly, sagging, shaggy,
spiritless, mindless of the spectators
disappointed with my sad appearance.
But that tune! Something about that music
once again sent sparks shooting through my veins.
I threw up my head and stepped to the time
its measures played and heard the crowd's applause
like old times past. I felt the strength of youth
again, ready to take on all comers,
remembering my twisting, sunfishing,
pounding moves that unsaddled so many.
Yes, the relentless erosion of age
had taken its toll, but old admirers
cheered me loudly that one last time.
The memory lingered for a long while
even after the music stopped, my head
dropped, and I walked away to face the storm.
...
Tipperary died in a Montana blizzard.

Farmers Sold Their Teams

I wrote a poem with my favorite seven syllable line a couple of years ago that I think hits the mark. A more modern thinker would probably say, "baloney!"

Farmers sold their old work teams
and bought tractors. Horse power
ate up too many bushels
of feed, the reasoning went.
So the sorrels, chestnuts, bays
and greys pulled their last wagons
loaded with forksful of hay,
piled high and wide. Their leather
harnesses dry stiff like boards
and the one-row machines turn
rust in the trees. - Salesmanship
supercedes old craftsmanship,
so we buy what we don't need,
then pay more than it's worth. Yes,
horsepower still pulls the plow
and drinks deeply from their tanks,
but how many bushels it
takes to feed these brutes? Answer:
I don't know. Maybe bankers
punch keys on money machines
to figure the high cost we've
paid. What worth are deserted
towns? Or a school bused away
to consolidate? A bell
on a church that no longer
chimes? - While the calculator
adds up (but mostly subtracts)
another farm expanded.
I quote: "I have to farm more
so I can pay for that big
John Deere tractor I just bought."

Cattle and Farm Talk

Today I went to a couple places on what's termed an All Breeds Cattle Tour. There were eight different breeds represented on fourteen ranches over the two day event. I'm not a cattleman but still enjoy being around them, and besides I was invited to come take pictures with my camera at the Schaff's and Ellingson's (relatives of mine through marriage).

The northwest wind still blew cold this morning and my winter jacket felt good. While out mingling with the crowd around the cattle pens holding those slick Angus, a man walked by whom I recognized immediately, Ray Bartholomay from Sheldon. He was a long way from home, but he's mostly retired from his own cattle and farming operation and has time on his hands. He said Janice, his deceased wife, had been gone three years and said it's harder every day being alone. I was glad for our visit and believe he was too.

Later, I introduced Ray to my father-in-law and listened in on their great conversation. Adam is just days away from his 90th birthday and is quite a bit old fashioned. Ray said he thought there would be some 200 bushel per acre corn crop around Sheldon. Adam asked if they still used Minnesota #13 corn seed. Ray cocked his head kind of funny and said, "No, Minnesota #13 and Square Deal, those days are over. You used to be able to go shell it out and plant it all over again." He was speaking in reference to the modern hybrid seeds with which you can't do that. I was reminded of Grandpa Bueling's garage that had dozens of headless nails sticking into the open rafters and had corn cobs stuck on them waiting for shelling and seeding. That seems a long time ago.

Squalls

Mr. Unwanted Winter stuck his cold nose in here where it's unwelcomed and has been blowing it hard for a couple of days, hard enough for tumbleweeds to start bouncing across fields, over roads, and hanging up on fence lines.

Driving across the Missouri River yesterday in the late afternoon, I watched a line of squalls drift over the valley. They travelled quickly and swallowed me, each one shrinking my world to a small, white dome.

Squalls always remind me of the March lambing season on the farm. It seemed that squalls and new-born lambs appeared together, and it was important that the lamb be gotten up fast to suck the mother ewe's teat and gain strength.

As I drove along I wondered about the derivation of that word squall. At home my dictionary told me it came from the Swedish sqval. That reminded me of another word from the Old Norse - window, meaning wind eye. So there was I, this old Scandinavian, watching the squalls through my window.

Left Handed Guitars

Today I visited the music store where I do my guitar dreaming. There must be a couple hundred of those stringed beauties hanging on the wall. Walking in there is somewhat akin to entering a candy store and drooling over the chocolate. About a year and a half ago I finally began doing something I'd wanted to do for a long time - learn to play the guitar. Now I suffer from GAS (Guitar Acquisition Syndrome).

Left handedness always stood as a curse - so I thought - and prevented my learning to play. One year at Christmas the young boy I was opened a gift containing a small guitar. It came with a simple instruction booklet, and I began strumming away. It sounded terrible! I held that instrument as a left hander would and gave no thought at all to the fact that chord fingering needed to be opposite, a mirror image of those chords I saw in the booklet. That little guitar got set aside and ended up I don't know where.

Now, fifty-five years or so later, a book I spotted in the public library, Left Handed Guitar, begged me to take it off the shelf and take home to study its secrets. The chart of basic chords it diagrammed was translated to a left hander's perspective. The door opened to a huge room filled with the music of guitars. No longer do I play "air guitar" as I sway my hips to the music in the radio. I do it for real.

Labor's Dilemma

Bismarck hosts a Bobcat manufacturing facility. The Bobcat line of machinery can be found internationally in thousands of construction or work sites. It is a shining North Dakota success story. They also make similar models at their original Gwinner site. The company's unionized Bismarck workers have gone on strike for higher wages and better health care benefits than has been offered them by management, and I'm sure of one thing: the union workers will garner negative comments from some quarters for their action.

I am sure of one other thing: because of labor unions, the middle class of this country is much larger than it would have been without them. Even good capitalists should agree with that. With decent pay the huge mass of workers bought goods and services that created even more manufacturing capacity. But the upshot of higher wages is that factories have closed and capital moved to third world countries in search of the low wage worker. Yes, that has lowered prices, and domestic-made products, if you can find them, are relatively higher in price. This eerie specter looms in our future. If we devolve into a service related economy, we'll run around trying to sell insurance policies to each other.

None of us are innocent of turning our backs on domestic products. I have a few power tools in my little wood shop bearing the mark "Made in China." Before they were available, I used hand tools or did without. Take a look in your closets. Where were your clothes made? When you're in the middle of a flood, you're bound to take on some water. I wish I had answers for the dilemma so I could protect our productivity sector. I just know from reading the early history of unionism that many labor leaders suffered mightily to establish U. S. worker's rights. Is there a danger of Bobcat moving overseas, too?

Homogenized

My dictionary defines homogenize as to make more uniform throughout in texture, mixture, quality, etc. We're not just talking milk here. Apply that to most any town of moderate to large size you travel through; they all look about the same with McDonald's, Wal-Mart, Pizza Hut, Lowe's, Penney's, Taco John's and almost ad infinitum.

It's a good thing local histories, landmarks, or industries differ, otherwise local boosters would possess little to give them distinction. In those rare communities where some independent entrepreneur makes a success of a business idea, it often follows for him to establish a franchise and begin spreading the good name across the land.

I remember in young manhood when I fancied myself as an adventurer and sportsman, I thought the Eddie Bauer brand of gear suited me most appropriately. I'm sure I got that idea from dreaming through the advertisements in a magazine I read faithfully: Alaska. The rugged outdoorsman I fancied to be needed their clothing and equipment. Returning from a journey to Alaska, an endeavor doomed to folly, I set my sights on visiting the Eddie Bauer store in Seattle. It loomed as a destination site for my pilgrimage retreat from the frontier. Yes, I located it, walked in, was met by a huge stuffed polar bear at the entrance, and beyong that, realized it was not much more than a glorified clothing store. And that became a lesson learned: I could have bought similar quality merchandise for less money at home. Advertising had painted this romantic notion that didn't stand up under scrutiny. Now, with that franchise spread to this community, I can walk into their store, compare, and go to Penney's to buy at their end-of-season sale.

Posts

Many English words hold more than one meaning. Post is one of them that sets my mind to wandering. Whenever I place a new entry on this website, it is called a post. It's my experience with posts on the farm that I'm drawn to, though, for this post.

On any livestock farm, miles of fence surround pastureland and further sub-divide larger acreage with line fences. We always had piles of wooden posts, steel posts, and electric posts on hand to patch fence or replace those broken. Our ground was level which made wire easy to stretch and hang on posts. When traveling around this country, I'm quick to notice those fences running through wet bogs, deep gullies, and thick forests where I recognize the extra work it takes to build and maintain them.

I remember building fence around grassland on muggy, mosquito-thick days. If I'd be at work fastening wire to posts, Dad would work ahead setting steel posts with a weighted driver. The sound of that tool striking the post in that thick air always arrived after I saw it strike. It is an image from long ago I've not forgotten.

Those summers I worked on a harvesting crew took me through country that used a different kind of post. Fences around Russell, Kansas were set in place with stone posts. Sandstone formations in that area yielded the material which I believe they cut with saws. I was told they had been standing there a long time, a fact I thought was a testament to early settlers' ingenuity.

A final story about posts features my Grandpa Charles Bueling as told to me by my Dad. Grandpa was a good horseman who knew how to break a team for work. It seemed one day he took a young team to the field to do some job. They spooked. One of them got across a fence line, and with one on either side, they ran along breaking posts off before he got them stopped. Dad said it was a new fence, too, and that Grandpa sure was mad.

Who Created God?

The 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics has been awarded to two Americans. According to the brief article in my newspaper, their work "affirmed the big-bang theory to even the most stubborn skeptics." I never took any courses in physics, but I've always been interested in what it has to say.

The idea of a Big-Bang has been around for awhile, but as an interesting aside, a scientist was not the first to conceive it. Edgar Allan Poe, the imaginative author wrote in one of his essays that God caused an explosion that created the universe. Whoever's idea it was, it has been the subject of intense study by scientists.

I do not have any trouble accepting the theory, nor do I have problems with reconciling things like evolution to religion. The problem I always think of is who created God so he could light the fuse. I've always experienced the dead end of what I heard a Jewish rabbi once term infinite regression. You can only go so far back. There's an obvious limit to knowledge. Here's where agnosticism gets a foothold. I want to believe in this "mystery" so that's where the faith the church teaches comes in.

Down here on earth religious zealots fight over what God says, does, or favors. Each religion believes it holds the key to heaven and all the others have it wrong. Maybe science will come along someday and provide the answers.

The Line Continues

We visited our son Clinton's family in Grand Forks Sunday through yesterday. Their little son Lucas is eleven months old, and with about one month intervals visiting with them, we can easily see how fast he grows and learns. Grandchildren reach two generations into the future and guarantee our genetic line will continue.

Since that crocodile crawled out of the swamp and bit me with cancer, I've thought a lot about mortality. It's given me reason to begin this web log. I want to leave some kind of record of a life lived besides some brief obituary in a newspaper. Future medical tests will answer whether the surgery eliminated the problem, but in any event, the time to start recording is now.

Researching the future is impossible. Time travel hasn't been invented yet. We only dream of the future and live in the present. Unfortunately, research into my ancestors' lives has not penetrated the thick wall that stands between us those five or six generations back. They've left no record, the tablet is blank. Reasons can be guessed: illiteracy, indifference, lack of time. At 64, more of my years have passed than remain, so I will do my best to keep from breaking the link between those ancestors we have knowledge of and my descendents.

Living the Myth

A couple of years ago during the annual cowboy poets show in Medora we were browsing the Western Edge bookstore. I looked out the window and saw a comical scene unfold. A new pickup truck parked at the curb and out stepped a full-fashioned cowboy wearing shiny black boots, an unblemished black hat, and a ground length black duster coat. I believe he would have worn a pearl handled six shooter if the law would have allowed. He was the perfect caricature of what has become known as the cowboy. After he spent a few minutes in the store he got back into his truck and drove off, leaving me with that humorous image. I shared the moment with the store owner and he told me one better. A man entered his store another time wearing spurs. Somehow he got one of them snagged on a bookcase and needed his wife's help to come disentangled.

Larry McMurtry, a Texas native cowboy son, writes much of the cowboy culture. His autobiographical book Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen takes a realistic look when he said "...almost at the outset cowboys began to try to cultivate an image that the media told them was theirs - they began to play to the camera as soon as the camera was there." Later he writes "Cowboys, early and late, have been influenced by their own imitations, in pulp fiction, in movies, in rodeo."

Now I don't care if wannabees walk around with their fancy western clothes, in fact I confess to owning a big shiny buckle or two myself. My only point is this, I know a lot of real cowboys who don't don western duds in the morning to do their work. They can be recognized by their work-thick fingers, heavy-calloused hands, lace-up work boots, and baseball caps. Articles of western clothing may hang in their closets for dress-up occasions, but you never think of them fitting a caricature. Some of these other guys are laughable. They do try to pose in a picture drawn by someone else. Several magazines in my local Barnes and Noble bookstore even glorify the western lifestyle by showcasing clothing, furniture, and housing which presents a model for those who think the world should look that way.