STRAIT TO HEAVEN

Seeing George Strait two nights in a row put me in another kind of heaven in Vegas.

George was in top form both nights (Dec. 8th & 9th). On Friday we had third-row end seats on the main floor. Due to the staggering of the rows, there were no seats in front of us. Even better, our position was next to the fenced aisle George walks to and from the stage. Ethyl managed three hand swipes, including one where HE squeezed HER hand, and I got one. It wasn’t exactly the thrill of my life — after all, I was kissed by The Cisco Kid — but it was a memory.

He sang more than 30 songs Friday, including two that paid tribute to Merle Haggard. On Friday, he did “Mama Tried” and “Are The Good Times Really Over For Good.” On Saturday he subbed “Working Man Blues” for “Mama Tried.”  He has included The Hag tribute in his concerts since Merle died last year. We were so close to the stage that we could watch his lips form every word. My personal favorite, which he sang both nights, was “We Really Shouldn’t Be Doing This.”

It was a special treat to have songwriter Dean Dillon join George on the stage both nights. They sang, “Easy Come, Easy Go,” one of the 11 Number Ones out of the 55 songs Dillon has written  for George, and “Here For A Good Time,” another Number One that Dean, George and Bubba Strait co-wrote. Strait’s Dillon hits also include “Marina del Rey,” “The Chair,” “I’ve Come to Expect It From You,” “She Let Herself Go” and “The Best Day.” Dillon joked that George’s producer talked him out of “Easy Come, Easy Go,” which he intended to record himself, by telling him George would make it a Number One. “I did the math, and the decision was easy,” Dillon said. 

Dillon and Frank Dycus originally co-wrote “Unwound” for Johnny Paycheck, but the latter was in prison. “Unwound” became the unknown Strait’s breakthrough hit, although it didn’t go to Number One. Dillon also wrote huge hits for artists other than Strait, like George Jones (“Tennessee Whiskey”) and Keith Whitley (“Homecoming ’63”), and more recently he has gotten a slew of cuts by Kenny Chesney (“A Lot of Things Different”) and Toby Keith (“A Little Too Late”).

We had tickets in the nosebleed section for Saturday night. That’s when George’s encore paid tribute to Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys with “Milk Cow Blues” and “Take Me Back to Tulsa.” A lot of George’s fans love Bob Wills and wish George would put out a western swing CD.

Half the fans at each concert must have been from Texas. Every time George mentioned the Lone Star State, in song or speech, people all over the arena whooped and hollered. A particularly obnoxious couple from San Antonio sat behind us Saturday. They yelled so loud that the woman next to me asked them to tone it down because they were in her ears. After mumbling about what a bitch the woman was, the couple finally settled a bit. 

Obnoxious boors aside, George’s concerts always take his fans Strait to heaven.

COWBOY HEAVEN

“Cowboys ain’t easy to love, and they’re harder to hold,” according to a country music song. 

Nevertheless, I’m trying my best to get my hands on one and haul him home with me. I’ll even buy his plane ticket.

Ethyl, aka Annette, and I are in Las Vegas, and this is the week of the National Finals Rodeo. This place is crawling with cowboys and lots of cowboy wannabes. The two in the photos accompanying this post are the real deal. I found both of them at Cowboy Christmas, a humongous indoor bazaar of western tack, apparel, boots and doo-dads at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

The young hottie at left is Sage Kimzey. At 23, he’s a three-time world champion bull rider. I told him people who ride bulls are just plain crazy. They have no saddle, no rope, nothing to hold onto but a silly little string. On top of that, they must  keep one hand in the air during the entire ride. He laughed and said he had always liked bulls. To each his own.

The other guy with whom I’m pictured (right) is Buck Taylor, a 79-year-old actor and western watercolor artist. I recognized him immediately as he walked by pushing a dolly loaded with some of his art work. I stopped him and told him I had one of his paintings, and regaled him with the story of how I had talked his wife, Goldie, into selling it to me without its gosh-awful cowhide frame at the Pendleton Roundup (Oregon) a few years ago. 

When I told him I was from Alabama, he said he was there recently making a movie with John Travolta. Didn’t tell me the title. Folks might remember Buck’s recurring role as Newly the gunsmith on TV’s “Gunsmoke.”  He has appeared in more than 50 movies, including “Tombstone” (1993), “The Alamo” (2004)  and the CBS mini-series, “Comanche Moon.”  His art includes portraits of some of his fellow “Gunsmoke” cast members, such as Jim Arness (Marshall Dillon) and Milburn Stone (Doc Adams ). We stopped by his booth and talked to Goldie, who said she had something she wanted to give me. It was a print of Buck’s watercolor of another character actor, Morgan Woodward, whom she said had appeared on ‘Gunsmoke” more often than any other actor besides the main cast. Woodward had signed the print for Goldie. She rolled it up and gave it to me. How sweet.

Several of the rodeo riders are showing up at Cowboy Christmas and other venues during the week to sign autographs. Tomorrow we’ll meet team roper Patrick Smith at one session, then up-and-coming country music singer Aaron Watson at another. Sunday we’ll meet rodeo champion Trevor Brazile, who has been called, “the world’s best cowboy.”

Meanwhile, tonight and Saturday night we see George Strait in concert. That’s the main reason for this trip. Sunday night we’ll see Reba McIntyre and Brooks and Dunn at Caesar’s Palace, and Monday night it’s Ronnie Milsap at the Golden Nugget. Tuesday night we go to the NFR.

I’m in cowboy heaven.

ORPHANED

Mallory and Luna

My five-month-old foal is an orphan. 

On October 25, I had to put down her mother, Mallory. She was my 15-year-old Tennessee Walking Horse. I’m still reeling from the shock. I couldn’t write about it until now.

When I went to the barn to feed the critters that Wednesday morning, Mallory was lying down in the far pasture. She didn’t get up to eat. That’s always a bad sign.

Colic was uppermost in my mind. That’s a fancy name for a stomach ache, but it has many causes. If it were a simple impaction colic, a good poop would remove it. So I found my Banamine, which relieves pain and relaxes a horse, but couldn’t find any needles. Some emergency kit, huh?

My vet couldn’t get to me, so I took Mallory to him in Oneonta. I left Luna behind, fearing Mallory might try to lie down in the trailer and fall on her. It was the last Luna saw of her mother.

After parking and checking in, I walked Mallory until Dr. Whitley could see her. He gave her a shot of Banamine and listened to her heart. Its beat was elevated, He didn’t like what he found during the internal exam, either.  He recommended taking her to Coosa Valley Equine in Pell City. That didn’t sound good.

At Coosa Valley, an ultrasound and another internal exam determined her intestines were slightly out of place, The problem could be corrected through surgery. She had a 70 percent chance of going home…in two weeks.

I watched the procedure from an upstairs office window. It wasn’t a pretty sight, seeing your treasured mare upside down, tongue hanging out, legs propped in slings, her hind ones spread like a woman on a gynecologist’s table. I had to turn aside once they started fooling with her innards.

Within a few minutes, the vet who had examined her came upstairs. It was worse than originally suspected. They found a fatty lipoma that had strangulated the far end of the small intestine.  Eight to ten feet of tissue was dead. They could cut it out and re-attach it to the cecum, but the procedure carried an 85 percent chance of failure. Barring a miracle, euthanasia was my only option.

The clinic uses a potter’s field for burial. I couldn’t stand that idea. A vet tech gave me the card of a guy who brought Mallory home and buried her. It was dark by then, so he did the deed by floodlights.

I now have four horses and a goat buried in my woods. Pet Cemetery. Didn’t Stephen King write a horror novel by that name?

Luna spent the next few days pacing the fence line, whinnying. Fortuitously, I had put the rescued gelding, Chance,  in the same pasture as Mallory and Luna a couple of weeks earlier. When her mom didn’t return, Luna attached herself to Chance. I hadn’t planned on weaning her at three and a half months, though.

These past few weeks have been rough on both of us. An affectionate foal, Luna seems to crave my attention. I brush and hug her more, take her for walks in the woods, talk soothingly to her about how much we both miss her momma. I never see her running or cavorting any more. I’m thinking of buying another foal as a playmate. I bought a pony for my grandsons, but Luna hasn’t taken to him.

Mallory was a great horse and a good mother. She was calm, crossed bridges and streams on trail rides, rarely spooked and was so gentle I could put anyone on her. I had envisioned her dying of old age about the time I moved to a nursing home.

I’ve lost two horses, a beloved dog, a barn cat, a goat and four first cousins (humans) in the past 14 months. 

I don’t know how much more death I can take.