Author Topic: No worries, no one dies in this one: Rancho Paradise Lost--I Had a Cowboy Once  (Read 2333 times)

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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This is from the Sunday "Styles" section of The New York Times--which, for some years now has not ceased to amaze with its ability to provoke the unintended laugh (usually while aiming for another target)--

The following could be alternatively entitled "Mothers, don't let your daughters grow up to buy cowboys," I guess.

Hmmmm. I wonder if we could get Lightning's phone number? No one wants to get rid of me bad enough to give me the down payment on a ranch, though--

As they say in New York when handing you your slice of apple pie: "Enjoy."


April 2, 2006

Modern Love

Rancho Paradise Lost
 
By SYBIL RANEY

I HAD a cowboy once. It wasn't like Ennis and Jack, more like Roy and Dale. But it was still hard for me to quit him.

One Christmas, years ago, when I was living in Los Angeles, I took my children and the man I was planning to marry on a vacation to a dude ranch outside of my hometown, San Antonio. My boyfriend had never been to Texas.

Once there, the kids and I loved the ranch. My boyfriend hated it. I was offended. How could someone not like the heart of Texas cowboy country?

He complained that everyone was just wearing boots and pretending they were cowboys, and that the food served in the dining hall was all brown and white. He missed his pesto sauce and misto salad, not to mention cappuccino.

"Cappuccino's brown and white," I reminded him.

He didn't laugh, said he was tired and went back to bed in the cabin.

Left to my own devices, or rather my two children's demands, I signed up the three of us for the next morning's horseback ride.

The day dawned cold and wet. We joined a few other sleepy-eyed families in the main lodge, and I could see that their kids, like mine, were determined to go despite the drizzle. My boyfriend was still asleep, having feigned a cold to get out of riding any horses.

"What are we waiting for?" I asked the group.

"Lightning," they answered in unison.

Surely I'd misunderstood. I couldn't imagine they were actually waiting for lightning to go with rain before setting off on a trail ride. That would be too stupid even for city folk to say.

I looked at my watch: 7:35 a.m., five minutes past our scheduled departure, and I was in my L.A. executive mode, irritated by the lack of punctuality. I guess I'd been living too long in New York and L.A. and had forgotten how to be a laid-back Texan.

"What did you say we're waiting for?" I asked.

"Lightning," they answered again, like a Greek chorus.

I turned to the man next to me. "Excuse me, but lightning?"

"Not talking about the weather. Talking about the man Lightning." He nodded at the door. "He's coming."

And sure enough, the big wooden doors flew open and in walked a cowboy who looked like he'd just stepped off of a Marlboro Man billboard. Rivulets of rain drained from his yellow slicker, off the crease of his Stetson and from his mustache. The only dry thing was the cigarette dangling from his lips. His green eyes cut to mine. I felt the blood rush to my face.

The others crowded around him, kids and grown-ups alike.

"Lightning!" they clamored. "Can we go on that same trail as we did yesterday?"

"Hold on there, and let me fill up my coffee cup first."

He tipped his hat to me as he ambled off to the dining room. They all followed, my kids included, as if he were the Pied Piper.

Well, I was dumbstruck. Or rather Lightning-struck. Never had I felt such animal magnetism emanating from a person. I thought of the so-called powerful men I'd known, all of whom had eccentricities that I found quirky and appealing at first, then pathological later. But this was a different kind of power.

I saw it at the corral later that morning. A mare acted up, and Lightning's big hands moved over her body in such a natural and sensitive way that she immediately quieted down. The other women and I watched intently. We were all wondering what those hands would feel like on us.

I looked at the men's faces in our little group. They too were taken in by Lightning's maleness and watched wistfully as if Lightning were the epitome of pure manliness, a level of masculinity they would never achieve but aspired to in their reveries.

That's what fascinated the children too: the rodeoin', rootin' tootin' part of it. It was unbridled hell bent for leather, wild and free and unfortunately a thing of the past. That's what I was thinking at the rodeo in town that night, where we'd gone in hopes of seeing Lightning rope and ride.

As one cowboy after another took turns being tossed in the air by wild-eyed animals, I was struck by the notion that there was little need for real working cowboys these days, only dude ranch wranglers and rodeo riders for the dudes' entertainment. The problem was that they thought they were real cowboys, and they talked as if they were, but it seemed hollow somehow, all part of the show.

As I moved down close to them, I heard Lightning say: "My horses are fat as ticks on account of that no-good mule feed I got from dadgum L. T. 'Course it ain't nothin' like some I came across one time when I was team ropin' over yonder at Sweetwater."

When Lightning said "my horses," I wish I had realized he really meant the dude ranch's horses, not his own, because he was just the hired hand. And I wish I had remembered what I heard Ali MacGraw say once: "I always want to ride off into the sunset with the cowboy, but next time I do, I'll make sure he has a horse first."

I fell for Lightning anyway, so much so that when an opportunity arose to go back to the ranch soon after, I grabbed my children, left my boyfriend behind for good and went for a longer visit.

This time Lightning and I grew so close so fast that we even started talking about our future: his dream of having a little dude ranch of his own some day and mine of leaving the city with my kids for this Texas hill country I'd loved so in my own youth.

I know a lot of people fantasize about doing that sort of thing, leaving one's old life behind and striking out on some impossible romantic adventure. But I actually did it. Six months later I packed us up and rode off into the sunset with Lightning. I knew this cowboy had a horse, though, because I'd bought it. And I'd also bought a ranch to go with the horse and the cowboy.

My kids were thrilled, and so was I. Besides being a big adventure, I thought, this would be a "welcome to the real world" lesson for them, the perfect antidote to the excesses of California and New York, where we'd lived before their father and I were divorced.

"Can we have our own horse?" they started begging as soon as we arrived. "A four-wheeler? A truck?"

"If the business makes enough money, we can."

Or even, apparently, if it didn't. Because not long after I said those words, Lightning came walking up to the ranch leading two horses, one in each hand.

"Here ya go, cowboy," he said to my son. And then to my daughter, "Here ya go, cowgirl."

The kids shrieked with joy. But all I could think was, How did he pay for them? The ranch wasn't officially open for business yet, so everything bought thus far was out of my savings. As soon as the kids galloped away, I asked.

"Oh, I got them from our neighbor down the road. Told him you'd come around and give him a check for 'em when you got a chance."

He looked off toward the kids and grinned, holding his cigarette lightly between his lips. "Now that's some happy kids." He took a swig from his beer and looked at me for approval.

A THOUSAND things went through my mind at that moment: I was glad the kids were happy, and it was nice of Lightning to think of them, but why had he just spent my money without asking me, and why was he drinking a beer at 10 a.m. anyway?

Red flags were all over, but I'd made my bed, so I figured I'd better find a way to lie in it. And lying in it with Lightning was easy, since the sex was so good.

That night, after I paid the neighbor, I went down to the barn where Lightning was building stalls. I thought I'd better get some things straight with him.

I walked in just as Lightning was giving my son a new cowboy hat. Steam gushed from the spout of a coffee pot on the hot plate, and Lightning moved the hat in and out of the vapors using the humidity to shape its crown and brim. "First your crease's got to be exactly in the center. Then the side dents got to be in the same spot on each side."

My son looked like he was witnessing magic. My heart melted.

Over the next few years, as the dudes came and went, there was a lot I came to respect about Lightning. He would sit for hours and hold forth in the barn telling the happy customers all about cowboying and patiently showing them how to do it. He taught an elderly German couple how to two-step, many a kid how to handle a rope, and doctored countless horses.

Every morning, before he went out to feed the horses at dawn and drive the kids to school, he left me a rose from the garden.

But our dream faded. Lightning started coming home later and later at night, and he and I drifted apart. One of those nights, after being ill all day, I knew I needed to go to the hospital, 45 miles away. Lightning, unfortunately, was nowhere to be found, and I sadly realized that I was on my own.

After my emergency surgery, I came back to the ranch just as the weather turned dry and a long drought set in. This proved to be the final straw. There was no hay for the horses, and our grass was parched. It was too hot for the dudes to ride. No one came. Lightning told me he was sorry and not to worry, but I knew we'd reached the end of the trail for us.

I sold the ranch that fall, and Lightning and I parted ways. For a while we both had what we wanted: he got to be a real cowboy, and I got to be his cowgirl. Now, more than a decade later, I still think of him often, especially at sunset.

Sybil Raney is a writer living in Austin, Tex.

« Last Edit: April 02, 2006, 02:29:21 pm by jmmgallagher »
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline MaineWriter

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Hey John,
Thanks for posting that story. Great read. Now I think I'm gonna go find me a lobster fisherman (actually had one of 'em once, and the story turned out sorta like this one, except I didn't buy no boat!)  ;D

Leslie
Taming Groomzilla<-- support equality for same-sex marriage in Maine by clicking this link!

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Leslie,

Betcha got some great dinners out of the deal!

Hmmmmm!

 ;D

(We is so awful!)
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Thanks for posting that, John. Wow. ...
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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A bit Barbara Hutton Manque, no??

 ;D

(Hell, if I had the funds, I'd probably be tempted myself, and no worries as to "who owns the horses!")
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"