Cowboy Poetry

We're at Escapade this week, a gathering run by the Escapees.  It's like SHARE for RVers ... if you know what SHARE is.  Or like Comicon is for Sheldon and Leonard, more or less.

Tonight the entertainment was Ham-o-Rama, where amateur performers took the stage.  One man read a poem:

We'd worked all day a-branding calves

And now we took a rest.

Buck opened up a six-pack,

Took a smoke out of his vest.

We started in to contemplate

The problems of the day.

Some stretched out on feed sacks,

Some on a pile of hay.

“You know,” he says, “for thirty years

I've been a-running steers,

And how this cattle ranching's changed

Could bring a man to tears.

Some people say that beef's too high,

Some say it causes cancer;

Any bureaucrat you ask

Will have a different answer.

And when I think of government

And all the funds they've spent

To get the public on our range,

And then they raised the rent.

They pay a man to raise no corn;

They buy another's cheese;

They pay you not to milk your cows

And turn loose half your bees

Then Pete says on the radio

They broadcast Tuesday night

That there are just too many cows:

That is the rancher's plight.

He said some feller took a count,

And don't this beat the band:

He says there are nine million cows

That live upon this land.”

Now Joe, he done some ciphering

And then said “Boys, look here,

What if those nine million head

Was one gigantic steer?

That critter'd weigh a million ton;

He'd reach from coast to coast;

Eat 90,000 ton of hay,

But what I like the most

He'd have his off hind foot near Buffalo

The front one in Tacoma,

The near hind hoof in Jacksonville,

The fourth one near Pomona

And after he ate all that hay,

Wouldn't it raise a fuss

If that steer did to Washington

What Washington's done to us?”