People often tell me, they say, "LSP, do the rehab." And I do, it goes like this. Look at your sturdy wooden cane and thank God it's not some flimsy piece of tariff-ridden aluminium rubbish that's made in China. Perhaps this cane is a badge of rank.
Buoyed up by the positive thought, use the thing to navigate across the Compound's attractive front porch and into the waiting rig. Then drive to one of the Missions for Sunday Mass, reflecting on the weaponlike aspect of the stick at your side. Too bad it doesn't conceal a sword or a Derringer. Reverie over, use it to nav from the car park to the sacristy, where the lights are mysteriously off.
Non Illuminatio
Struck by the lack of illumination, observe your MC sitting in the dark and greet him with a sunny "Hello Dracula" while waving the stick about, Bram Stoker style. He was trying to sleep, the MC, not Mr. Stoker, because "a dog got me up at 4.00 a.m." Bless him.
Commiserate over the furry alarm clock issue, vest, pray and make your way to the back of the church for the "entrance procession," stick in hand. Use it to lean on, point it at people, practice drill movements with it, whatever, a useful prop. But Bronc Dracula has other ideas.
Bronc
"You're not using that for Mass," he says with steely cowboy resolve. You can't argue with that, so I hung the wretched thing up on a coat rack as if a testimony to a miraculous cure, and the Mass began.
No cane, no walker, and there it was, genuflections to boot. First time I'd genuflected since I was kicked off the horse, and it felt good, a veritable triumph of the will or more precisely, modern medicine.
Thanks, MC, sometimes it doesn't hurt to be pushed and if it does, so be it. Now in fairness, my friend's been thrown off more horses than I've ridden, and I've ridden a few. You can see, perhaps, why I wasn't about to argue the stick. Respect, and don't look or be weak in front of the team, especially when one of them's a Bronc Dracula.
Leni
And that, vast international readership, is the story of that. A short tale of God, Church, Rehab and Country Life in Texas.
Ride on,
LSP
