Bum Wines and the Peyote Coyote by Mike Marino (ebook pc reader .TXT) 📕

with Texas, or cowboys from there, I think they were from there, never asked, but aren't all cowboys from there?
The day dawned and we didn't dawdle or doodle, but went double time to town down the beach a few miles where there was a rodeo going on. A small town affair with a dirt corral and people standing around it in a circle while others sat in the stands and the bleachers at the highschool as this rodeo was a summer rodeo and held in the football stadium where just six months ago, varsity boys were trying to win a pennant so they could get thier team name on the billboard just before you entered town..."Home of the 1970 Champs"..this rodea was a real ridin' ropin' shit kickin' affair befitting Oregon. The smell of hot dogs and burgers wafted wiffs of bbq charred to perfection meats, cooked by the local 4-H to raise funds for the next county fair and animal sale.
Luke and Pat and me had fortified ourselves with a small campfire breakfast, coffee and half a bottle of a Mad Dog with perfect 20/20 vision to put a bite on and get an edge on the festivities. Small town locals are viewed so much better when slightly intoxicated to tolerate all their little quirks of gossip and intolerance of the outside world. Luke had yellow teeth from too much Marlboro'ing, and so did Pat, but they had healthy ruddy complexions from being outdoors so much over the years, employed and not. Large crevices lined their faces, Grand Canyons of character with a Colorado River of experience flowing through them. We pooled what money we had between us, and bought hot dogs, a few greasy cardboard baskets of greasier fries and Luke and Pat had bought beers for themselves being as I was too young to drink in public anyway.
The local radio station was doing a live broadcast from the rodeo and Ed Roberts, who had been an on-air fixture at the small station for over 23 years was setting up his equipment to give a blow of the festivities complete reading commercials live on the air for Harsens Feed and Grain and the local farmers co-op all you can eat pancake breakfast this Sunday to benefit the local ladies auxiliary of the VFW where mostly drunks hung out and talked about wars passed at the post when not holding pool tournaments and playing poker and horseshoes for small side bets. The local wet set junior misses arrived in a pubescent carriage to parade their bottoms for the local boys who would eventually score under the bleachers after the rodeo had packed up and left so the boys could rope and ride the cheerleader fillies across the finish line all beat, spent and sweaty then put them up in the stall until the next ride where they would hitch them up once again and crack the whip to make them gallop or trot on command.
The mayor was there, overweight and out voted at every council meeting, a figurehead position similar to the queen of England or the queen of anywhere. They mainly cut ribbons at grocery store events, along with Ed Roberts, and used the city to their advantage quietly so as not to attract attention, except there was always one or two trouble makers in town who anointed themselves as watchdogs to monitor the civic situation. The town was there, so were Pat and Luke and me. We soaked up the sun on our faces and heard the music start and the young cowgirls rode into the ring with flags and banners and fringe dancing from their jackets and milk white thighs shining in the sunlight like pearls and short little skirts revealing just a hint of the treasure behind the curtain hidden from view waiting to be discovered by Ed Roberts, or the mayor.
The calves were roped and brought down to the ground, and the bull rides were on old bulls, not much of a threat anymore, as they were old, the riders were older, and the rodeo arena, was just a small dirt corral so with whoopin' and hollerin' it was machismo fun and frolic to show off and fall down in the dirt and get up grinning and smacking the dust off your Levi's with a swift whisk of the cowboy hat with a growling "Damn," punctuating the air with a laugh and a smile while the audience applauded madly and roundly yelling things like, "Waytago Roy," or something like that.
The rodeo ended, the horses and other animals put into trailers, the concession people closed up shop, and the trash barrels overflowed with large cups that once held orange soda or beer and the wax paper food wrappers lie everywhere and with the coming of dusk and the sundown winds took flight like little greasy magic carpets to fly away and over into the MacPherson field, just past the old oak near the old Buxton homestead. Some of the female townies disappeared with some of the letter jacket townies who would someday not see the football field or Friday night lights as players ever again, but end up working 10 hour days at the family septic tank supply company or at the bowling alley as pin monkeys.
The three amigo's left the rodeo/football grounds to make their way and snake their way back to the beach, where there, they had another rip roarin' fire for warmth kissing the sky, and a much smaller one for the more specific task of cooking up a pot o' beans. Coffee washed it all down once again and then followed up with an after dinner roll yer own and the rest of the Mad Dog bottle. They talked and the words came out as did the stars above and soon, one by one they drifted off to sleep listening to the gentle ocean and caressed by the gentler breeze.
When morning finally broke, I woke up and looked around, and like the dark of night, the rodeo men were no where to be found. They got up early, as was their habit to get a started on the days journey, miles to cover, sights to enjoy and to soak up life as a sponge to a spill on the floor of cheap wine that stains white carpeting. They were headed southward to California not wanting to wake me, were as quiet as prisoners escaping from a P.O.W. camp. I sat up in my sleeping bag and could see their footprints in the sand walking south marking the trail of the invisible man, or men in this case. I also noticed there was a small fire still burning and next to my sleeping bag was a spare pack of rolling papers and small plastic bag of tobacco. No man left behind.It was the rolling papers that did it. A kid happens to come across them on the beach, they older and wiser, he with no experience versus two experienced, grizzled cowboys, they could have talked down to me, humoring me as all adults humor children, but I had managed to match them on the jousting field in full armor, one, by the simple and sustained act of rolling a cigarette with loose tobacco without benefit of a rolling machine, in the wind to boot, and damn, that fine smoke was rolled as tight as the private region of a virgin before she gives it up to her first lover on a silver platter.
Yeah, the cowboys had ridden off into the sunrise, and left more than footprints in the sand. They left a lasting memory and valuable lesson I never forgot...if you can roll yer own, you can hold yer own!.
Cowboy Redux
By Mike Marino

The preacher was the best damn shot in the whole congregation!
Among other talents, as a hunter of game and fowl, large and small, fresh and foul, he could stir-fry a brown squirrel with the rapid fire finesse of a steak chef in Okinawa slicing through a Mongolian steak, cutting it into quarters, then, smaller still. He was handsome, not wholesome, but handy with a hunting knife. Swift cutting carbon steel Buck knives mainly, the blade of choice, for the outdoorsman, as it was a Medusa head with many uses, Medusa uses. The handles were tough and made handy bang-bang Maxwell hammers on the ranch or farm. He was adept with them and claimed he could saw sequined short skirted magicians assistant in two at a sideshow without breaking a sweat, and then, without missing a beat, or breaking protocol, take both halves out to dinner on a double date, torso to go, and then at the end of the night end up in bed with both of them. He always claimed he loved the top half for her mind and oral expository, but the bottom half, it could execute a classic pincer move that could rock the universe.
He may have been a holy man, but not a holier then thou man and he liked his drink. Priest punch he called it, red wine, and he could drink it from the barrel of a six-shooter after firing off six rounds at a war party of hostiles.. He had a hobo circuit as he viewed it, and managed to carve out countless miles of religion throughout the wild westies as if he were defacing Rushmore. This was the Waylon West, Jennings and the west of Gene and Roy, where I spent some years, and at the time thought I had landed right in the middle of a real yahoo cattle drive of cowboys in the center of the mandala of Indian Country. Not the silver screen singing "why shucks ma'am, I surely do love my horse and fair play, posse of pards, but real hard-ass bonifide cow punchers and pokers who played poker and other games of chance by choice. The non-denominal preacher was one of those characters, and not nominal in sense of the words meaning, The preacher was one-part Okie and plentiful parts of other things, a real Tommy Chong cacophony of heritage, and he rode in rodeo's at county fairs and small towns and big towns and cow towns like the Abilene sisters, Kansas and Texas as well as his reputed spiritual center ,Tulsa. He roped mainly, no bull and no bulls, too dangerous he claimed and was proved right, but he enjoyed shooting sharply for the thrill of it, and he was good. He was a peerless preacher when it came to packing a pistol or tossing another log of fire and brimstone on the fire.
Now, this giddy-up Gideon preacher could toss the bible across a motel room in Nachadoces, pull a heater from a holster and could (ba-bang!) put a bullet through Lincolns head on a penny at 100 yards assassinating a u.s.a. coin of the realm, recreating the conspiratorial confederlunacy of J. W. Booth, but, this time, it was for the fun of sport and not southern deep fat fried river carp crawdaddy mornin' ma'am sho is hot and sweaty today rip torn tee-shirt Stanley Kowalski politics or the cause of a caucus and consensus in conspiring Canada of dealing out death to tyrants north of Mason Dixon. Hot lead slicing through copper of our least used currency currently and god knows why they even make them in this age of debit cards and identity theft at the checkout counter, except to leave behind as an offering at stop and rob gas station joints in a little tributary tray on the counter for when you pay cash and instead of getting ten bucks of gas it overshoots to ten oh one or oh two oh-oh and the clerk has to say something like "That's ok, it's just a penny" motioning your offering way and back to