December 14, 2006
Working hard on finishing all of my March issue work before tomorrow when T. Charles flies in from Philly. We're going to Taco Villa, then to Mother Radina's, then Saturday morning we're flying to Mexico for a week. We've decided this is a backpack trip, so we are not taking our computers. If I post it will be in The Casa de Puta, or some such Mexican place of pleasure.

Sorry, rather Borat-ish of me.

We've got a New Poll up: Are you planning to participate in next year's celebrations of the 125th anniversary of Jesse James' death?

Oh, and here's a pretty cool mule missive I got last week, but forgot to run:

In the Worthless Information department, on mules.
I once stumbled onto a horse & mule show at a county fair in Colorado. The highlight of the night was a mule costume class. Among the entries:

1. A tall lean native looking fella, in jeans, boots, big black hat but NO shirt, driving a big sorrel mule hitched to a mold board plow. Very authentic looking.

2. A Electric Cowboy take-off, only with sombrero and serape on a nice paint mule, all lit up with twinkly lights.

3. My pick, but not the top prize winner, probably not pc? Big burly fella with a big bushy beard riding his big mule side saddle on his regular western saddle. Attired in big old well-worn hat and everyday boots, but wearing a red evening gown with appropriately stuffed bosom, skirt hiked to show off his hairy leg. Leading a donkey with a placard over its back that read "Everybody needs a little ass sometimes."

The other entries, several pretty girls riding their "niceer" mules were interesting and entertaining but not as much so as these three.
—Sharon Tally

Robert Ray jammed and slammed with me on the Dalton Gang Classic Gunfight. I finished four more small gouaches, including this one, "Bob Dalton Shoots" which I mentioned yesterday about Bob taking out eight train guards all by his lonesome, firing through a coal shed and hitting three of them. Pretty amazing shooting.



Speaking of playing with guns, I read a great interview with Jimmy Kimmel and Amy Silverman in the new Esquire. Jimmy's mama is a hippie and she raised Jimmy not to play with guns and she wouldn't allow him to have one when he asked for it. So Jimmy went out and bought his son the biggest toy gun he could find. See, this is how the world works. My grandfather, Carl Marvin Bell, had an Indian belt-drive motorcyle in about 1911, and he terrorized the farmers all over Winnebago County, Iowa, scaring and stampeding teams of horses and impressing those big-boned Norweigan gals. But he didn't hear a train coming near Lakota and as he tried to go across the tracks he finally saw the train, laid that Indian down and just missed dying. Messed up his leg. So, Carl swore off "sickles" and when his son, Allen P. wanted a motorcylce, Carl refused, saying they are too dangerous and predicting young Allen would someday thank him.

Instead, Allen P. had a son, and he bought this spoiled kid a Mo-ped when he turned 14 and a Honda 50, the next year. The kid graduated to a Triumph Tiger 500 and even raced them for a short period until a nasty spill on the sweeper of Eastside Cycle Park near Wilmot and Davis Monthan Air Base. The shaken kid walked away with one nasty "strawberry" on his butt and the belief that sickles are too dangerous. So the kid sold his Tiger and grew up (recently) and had a son, Thomas Charles and when T. turned fourteen he asked his dad for a motorcycle and the dad said, "No way! Too dangerous! Some day you'll thank me!"

And the last time I talked to Tomas he told me that as soon as he gets a son, he's buying him the biggest motorcyle he can find.

Amen. Repeat til' hell freezes over.

"I've got yer two-stroke, right here!"
—Old Iron Hog Saying