Copenhagen Comments

"Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to Heaven."

--All's Well That Ends Well (I, i, 231-232)



I went to The Country Store outside of Seguín on Saturday afternoon to get a sack of ice and an eskimo pie. Two old cowboys were on the front porch killing time and waiting for it to cool off enough to go home and kick the dog. One was sitting on a bench drinking a coca cola out of a can (co-cola you call it here). The other was squatting on his haunches leaning up against the wall. Elbows on his bony knees.

"How's it goin', guys?" I said by way of greeting, stopping on the steps. Neither of them looked at me but by reply, the first one said, "I haven't felt this good since the last time I felt good."

"And I feel a lot better now than the last time I felt this way." his partner said.

I stuck around to chat a little and chew on my toothpick. "What's it like around here?" I asked. "Is this a good place to live?"

A considered silence for a while and then the first geezer said, "Well, I reckon we got two problems in Seguín. We got too much Johnson grass and we got too many baptists."

"Well, at least we know how to get rid of the Johnson grass." said the other one, standing up to kick the kinks out of his knees. I could hear them grate and pop. "We pour whiskey on it and them baptists chew it down to the nub."

They snickered and gave each other the geezer equivalent of high five. I wondered how many times they'd used this line on a stranger.

A long way down the road we could see an old truck coming our way. The heat shimmered off the asphalt in front of it making it dance in the air.