A Honey Baked Ham Goes Missing And Badger Clark's Dusty Lyrics

 April 21, 2025

   Still sorting through the roadside wreckage I witnessed on my sojourn to the hometown of Billy the Kid earlier this month.

Windmill Down

   Just east of Pie Town, New Mexico is an abandoned ranchito next to the highway. As Walter Noble Burns so aptly put it, "The past beats against it like a shadowy surge."

The Honey-Baked Ham Caper

   We had a large scale theft this morning. Last Saturday Kathy, Uno and I went down to the Honey Baked Ham Store and bought a big ol' sucker with all the trimmings for $85. We had a few choice slices with our neighbors yesterday—Easter Sunday—and it was yummy. This morning, Kathy was divvying up the rest for her brother and sister and had to leave the kitchen to answer her phone. When she came back the remaining ten-pound honey-baked ham was gone. Only the wrapper on the floor remained.

   When I talked to this guy he swears he was no where near the scene of the crime.

"I saw a one-armed man running away."

   So far, no arrests have been made, but damn if that dog sure is thirsty now!

Daily Whip Out:

"In A Cloud of Golden Dust"

   Thanks to my Nogales compadre, Greg Scott, who shared this Badger Clark "Dust Burger":

When my feet are in the stirrups 

And my hawse is on the bust,

With his hoofs a-flashing lightnin'

In a cloud of golden dust,

And the bawlin’ of the cattle 

Is a-comin’ down the wind 

Then a finer life than ridin’

Would be mighty hard to find. 

  Just a ridin’, a-ridin’

Splitting long cracks through the air

  Stirrin’ up a baby cyclone,

  Rippin’ up the prickly pear

   As I’m ridin’

—Badger Clark, 1904