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Today is the birthday of my college pal, Ernie Reinhold, who has seen six dozen summers so far. He lives on a ranch in Wyoming.
I was inspired today to tell you a story of one of my long-ago visits to Ernie’s home, a story of runaway horses, but I thought I better check first to see if I’d already told it to you. I went to my Archives Page, where all these WoWs are listed, and then, doing a Ctl-F search for the word “cowboy,” I found that, yes, what a shame, I have already published the story, in the form of a poem about a man called “Stan.”
So, if you want, you can look it up the way I just did, but I’m going to print here my half-dozen favorite lines, what Ernie said when our horses ran full speed across a freshly furrowed field:
Hauling hard upon his reins, Stanley hollered “Whoa!”
And again, he hollered. “Whoa, I say whoa! Whoa, whoa,
whoa, whoa, whoooooa, you silly sonofabitch!”
But the horses didn’t slow.
“I am a farmer,” I heard Stan plead.
“I ain’t no goddamn cow-boy!”
I sometimes exaggerate a bit when I write for you, I might as well confess. But I am pretty sure in those six lines I put only the whoas that Ernie whoaed while we rode, nothing more and nothing less.
♦
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