Kid Rock!

 

Wow. Go Kid!

Cheers,

LSP

On The Road On The Gun

The rig hummed along, thank you very much after a fortune spent at the aptly named "shop," and all was well with rural Texas as I drove to visit a sick cowboy. We talked about liturgy and society at the ranch as well as the Holy Cross Fathers.

Their erstwhile supremo married a nun who'd got herself into trouble for witchcraft in Africa, Una Kroll. Una went on to champion womyn priests and died last year. I don't know if she remained married to the former monk. 

After anointing my friend I drove to Waco. "What you going there for?" he asked, hopefully recovering his spirits. "To get some things for my new gun," I replied, quick as you like and then some, "It's a 7.62 battle rifle."

Fun Guns on Franklin supplied the deficit along with the extra bonus of late '70s music on the store jukebox. Go ahead, shop for AR15 barrels, Magpul accessories and all things weaponry while listening to the Clash.

"I say," I asked a youthful shop assistant, "Are you the only deadly assault rifle store in town that plays Machine Gun Etiquette and God Save The Queen on some kind of loop?" The pleasant young man looked embarrassed, made a needless excuse and took all my money. Thanks a lot, Malcolm  so-called McLaren.

Wallet several pounds lighter I headed for home and a kid who wants to enlist. He's at the gym now working out and he'll have to if he's going to lift the new rifle. So will I.

Gun rights,

LSP

Love Texas

After Mass on Sunday, two church ladies were talking about a town notable. Some time ago, he'd gotten into the beer and decided to saddle up and charge around town. His wife called her friend, "Have you seen my husband?" and the friend replied, "Have you seen my horse?" She hadn't, then all became clear.

"Well look at this," said the friend, "Your jackass has just turned up on my horse." Apparently he liked nothing better than to ride around town. I asked a matriarch whether that was against the law, thinking to myself that I'd like nothing better than to ride around town. She looked at me, "I don't think anyone ever told him that."

Someone's written a clever article saying that Texas has become a "caricature of itself." Others might say that the Lone Star State is larger than life and twice as big, the map alone suggests it. For goodness sake, you could put a large chunk of England in the Panhandle alone. But what do I think?

A Typical Cowboy

I'd say that the spirit of the frontier isn't that far away from this state, especially when you're in the countryside; it wasn't so long ago that people rode their horses in this town. 

I'm in favor of that.

All for Texas,

LSP

Boot and Spur

When we walked into the Pitt Stop yesterday to get hamburgers, one of the riders was wearing spurs. An old timer looked up from his booth and said, "Spurs?" and my friend said, "Well you can't be a cowboy without spurs, can you now."

The old timer thought for a bit and kind of beamed back, "I haven't worn a pair of those in years!"

I hardly ever ride with them and maybe that's a mistake, but here's some basic spur wisdom from HorseChannel.com:

Spurs are no substitute for good riding skills. By no means will they help make you a better rider.

“You have to know how to ride a horse correctly before you put spurs on,” says Sherryl Crawford of Lipan, Texas, who grew up running cans, trains her own barrel horses and also team ropes. “If you don’t really know what you are doing as far as riding or training a horse, and you’re also spurring him, you’re just going to end up with a big problem that you can’t fix.”

“Spurs are a good tool if you use them correctly; they’re not for looks, and they’re not to be used as a weapon,” says Earnest Wilson of Tolar, Texas, who is a well-respected Paint Horse trainer with 46 years in the business...

Spurs should be applied with steady pressure—pressing the spur into the horse’s side, not poking him. You can increase the pressure as necessary, but if you poke or jab the horse he’s going to lurch or jump. Then you risk grabbing with your legs to hang on, and grabbing his mouth, too. That will simply scare your horse. 

Ride on,

LSP