The Cowboy!  


A successful rancher died and left everything to his devoted wife.

She was a very good-looking woman and determined to keep the ranch, but knew very little about ranching, so she decided to place an ad in the newspaper for a ranch hand.

Two cowboys applied for the job. One was gay and the other a drunk. She thought long and hard about it, and when no one else applied she decided to hire the gay guy, figuring it would be safer to have him around the house than the drunk.

He proved to be a hard worker who put in long hours every day and knew a lot about ranching. For weeks, the two of them worked, and the ranch was doing very well.

Then one day, the rancher's widow said to the hired hand, 'You have done a really good job, and the ranch looks great You should go into town and kick up your heels.'

The hired hand readily agreed and went into town one Saturday night.

One o'clock came, however, and he didn't return. Two o'clock and no hired hand. Finally he returned around two-thirty, and upon entering the room, he found the rancher's widow sitting by the fireplace with a glass of wine, waiting for him.

She quietly called him over to her.

'Unbutton my blouse and take it off,' she said.  Trembling, he did as she directed.

'Now take off my boots..' He did as she asked, ever so slowly.

'Now take off my stockings.' He removed each gently and placed them neatly by her boots.

'Now take off my skirt.' He slowly unbuttoned it, constantly watching her eyes in the fire light.


'Now take off my bra.' Again, with trembling hands, he did as he was told and dropped it to the floor.

Then she looked at him and said, 'If you ever wear my clothes into town again, you're fired.'

Subject: FW: HISTORY UNFOLDING

 This man is an American hero. God protect us from the well meaning ignorant who never study the lessons of history. I will keep my guns. G

---

Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 09:26:00 -0500


 

 -----Subject: Fw: HISTORY UNFOLDING

Subject: History Unfolding This  should be required reading by every man, woman, and child in the USA.  Please read. . He attended Harvard University , graduating there in 1969 with a B.A.. in history. He then spent several years more at Harvard, gaining a PhD in history, which he obtained in 1976. He served in the Army Reserve from 1970 to 1976. He is a professor in the Strategy and Policy Department of the United States Naval War College and has previously taught at Carnegie Mellon, Williams College and Harvard University . Kaiser's latest book, The Road to Dallas, about the Kennedy assassination, was just published by Harvard University Press. Dr. David Kaiser History Unfolding I am a student of history. Professionally, I have written 15 books on history that have been published in six languages, and I have studied history all my life. I have come to think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is simply a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes these exist, but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus. Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it.. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about ten to fifteen years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two. We demand and then codify into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people we know they can never pay back? Why? We learned just days ago that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has "loaned" two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the $700 billion we all argued about so strenuously just this past September. Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of "we the people," who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not. We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy. Why?   We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why? We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it simply wants marriage to remain defined as between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?) We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose? Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, social security is nearly bankrupt, as is medicare and our entire government. Our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and I know precisely what I am talking about) - the list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth.. It is potentially 1929 x  ten... And we are at war with an enemy we cannot even name for fear of offending people of the same religion, who, in turn, cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so. And finally, we have elected a man that no one really knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla , Alaska . All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary (Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe are more important.) Mr. Obama's winning platform can be boiled down to one word: Change. Why? I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now. This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again. And that is only the beginning.. As a serious student of history,  I thought I would never come to experience what the ordinary, moral German must have felt in the mid-1930s In those times, the "savior" was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they should have known was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory. Conservative "losers" read it right now. And there were the promises. Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and frowned and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his "brown shirts" would bully and beat them into submission.. Which they did - regularly. And then, he was duly elected to office, while a full-throttled economic crisis bloomed at hand - the Great Depression. Slowly, but surely he seized the controls of government power, person by person, department by departme nt, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The children of German citizens were at first, encouraged to join a Youth Movement in his name where they were taught exactly what to think. Later, they were required to do so. No Jews of course,   How did he get people on his side? He did it by promising jobs to the jobless, money to the money-less, and rewards for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across Europe , and across the world. He did it with a compliant media - did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and .... . .. change. And the people surely got what they voted for. If you think I am exaggerating, look it up. It's all there in the history books. So read your history books. Many people of conscience objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and ridiculed. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though. And the world came to regret that he was not listened to. Do not forget that Germany was the most educated, the most cultured country in Europe . It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And yet, in less than six years (a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency) it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors.. All with the best of intentions, of course. The road to Hell is paved with them. As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong by closing my eyes, having another latte, and ignoring what is transpiring around me... I choose to believe the evidence. No doubt some people will scoff at me, others laugh, or think I am foolish, naive, or both. To some degree, perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe-and why I believe it. I pray I am wrong. I do not think I am. Perhaps the only hope is our vote in the next elections. David Kaiser     Jamestown , Rhode Island United States

 The Raiders

What do you become when you never had any heroes? That’s easy, you become what the street lets you become. In our case, living on Mulberry Street meant that we had no one to look up to, and so we had to become our own heroes. How many times did I see my mother leave the house after dark with all of us in the car so that she could meet my father at the edge of town where he would quickly unload one hundred pound sacks of grain from the semi-truck he was driving so that he could sell them later to one of his buddies with horses? Or how about when he would siphon off gasoline from his work truck and bring it home to store it in the shed where our paint horse Pinto used to be kept in. Heroes, what a bunch of crap! We had no one to look up to and try to be like. Instead, we became like him, eager to do things that no boy of fifteen should have been doing.

The Raiders was our little gang on Mulberry Street. It wasn’t led by the oldest but instead by the one who had the most “cojones,” our cousin Tommy. Yeah, I remember how easy everything was for him and how uneasy it made us. My name is Miko and I just happened to be in somewhere in the middle of four boys who were living on Mulberry Street. But after all, I was talking about our little gang of thieves called the Raiders. Tommy thought that one up and we, like a bunch of pendejos, went along with it.

There were five or six of us who made up the Raiders and most of us were related in one way or another. On Mulberry Street, we learned that Sangre was an important bond one that would often save you when you needed saving the most. Primos were usually people you could count on to have your back when you were about to get your ass kicked, or when your father had just beat the shit out of your mother. We didn’t cry when bad things happened. Primos knew that and just let you have your space and time to get over it.

Tommy somehow had gone from being a little kid to fifteen and somehow missed out on all the years in between. I guess that’s why he became the leader. Where we were bumbling and inept, he was cool, sure and tough. After he beat this white kid up at Mesa Junior High, the principal asked Tommy, “Why did you hit this other boy and break his nose?” Tommy looked at Mr. Johnson, with a half smile on his face and replied, “I didn’t like his looks, so I thought I’d change’em.” He was cool and we all wanted to be like that. Knowing what to say to the girls and fitting in with the older guys was something he knew how to do and we didn’t. My older brothers looked at him as an equal and always included him in their adventures while denying me the same consideration. It sucked!

The others were my cousin Joe Salayandia and his brother Roy, my older brother Rocky and Venado, the black kid who lived next door. We called him Venado as his name was Leroy Deer and in Spanish, venado stands for deer. Pretty smart, right? The thing about it was not one of us could be Tommy, even if deep in down inside we all wanted to be just like him. The problem with being Tommy was that it came with a lot of bad shit as well. His father, my tio Rico didn’t seem to have much use for him. We heard that he was here in Roswell because my tio had kicked him out of his house for stealing his car. Roswell was his last chance to get it right and quit messing up. The last time he had been picked up by the Juvenile officers, they had told his mother, my Tia Tomasa, that the next stop for her oldest was Springer, the boy’s prison up north. Tommy just looked at us when they brought him home and said with what the gringos called a shit eating grin, “Look vatos, those pinche juras are gonna take my ass to Springer if I keep messin up. Guess you know that means I better live it up cause my stupid ass don’t know any better.”

Tommy was cool like that. Even when he was looking at the worst thing that could happen he still found a way to play it off. If it had been one of us, then we would have been shitting bricks and trying to play it safe. Joe tried to make out like he was a tough guy too, but we all knew better. He had picked a fight with a big white boy at school and that shit kicker had beat him down like he owned him. Pinche Joe had a shiner that looked like he had gone out and paid for it at the store. Of course Tommy found the guy right after that, and without any warning, he kicked him in the balls to cut him down to size and then started to beat the holy shit out of him. It wasn’t pretty what he did to him, and if Joe hadn’t been one of my primos, I would have felt sorry for that pinche vato when Tommy finished with him. It got to be a joke with us that every time that he saw that white boy he would always taunt him, telling him, “What’s up putito?” Larry, the guy who had been on the receiving end of that five gallon can of whup-ass, never failed to flinch when he said that and soon transferred to Goddard, the high school across town.

Funny thing about Rick and Venado, they were both older than Tommy by a couple of years and still they let him tell them what to do. Me, shit I was so scared of what I didn’t know that it was easy for me to let him be in charge. What the hell did I know about life? I remember when I got up the nerve to ask out Sally, the girl next door who was supposed to be easy, and that night, all I could do was put my arm around her and keep it there all night. I managed a little kiss, but I just know that if I had been Tommy, I would have gotten a lot more and my cherry would have popped right then and there instead of later with Mary, the oldest of the Turrieta sisters. Damn, getting laid, now that was something that didn’t happen every day and when it did, hell I found the one thing that would dominate my life forever. But, I’m getting ahead of myself and I was talking about Sally, the girl next door who was developing faster than we could ever imagine. It wasn’t long before she had a nice pair and didn’t mind showing them to those of us who were brave enough to ask it of her. No, I wasn’t that brave, but you can bet that Tommy was.

My brothers did everything they possibly could to get her to come over to our house to hang out when her mother wasn’t around. But, it wasn’t long before Sally’s mother, Isabel, figured it out, and we would be forced to lie and say she wasn’t there all the time hiding her in our bedroom closet behind the dresses that my mother wore. The moment when it finally came to and end was when Isabel had come to our door asking, no demanding, to know where her daughter was. We pretended not to know, but that was of little consequence to Isabel who pushed us aside and stormed into the house yelling at the top of her voice, “Cabroncita, me la vas a pagar cuando te pesco!” She had a weapon in her hand, a bat, and we were not about to get in the way of that woman who was so pissed off, she could barely contain it. Isabel made a beeline for the back of the house in search of hiding places and soon found her in the closet. After that, she was forbidden to come over to Tommy’s house or ours if her mother was anywhere around. I know now that she was just trying to protect her, but c’mon, Isabel had six kids and every one of them had a different daddy, so who the hell was she trying to fool. And on top of that she was crazier than shit. How many times did her son Ronny piss her off and there she’d be, chasing him down the street yelling as she held a hammer in one hand and her temper in the other, threatening to kill him if she ever got a hold of him. It was what we later would recall with some laughter as Isabel’s crazier than hell days.

Sally had lost her innocence long before some of us did, and Tommy played a large part in that. She wasn’t alone in that respect, for Tommy contributed largely to many of us on Mulberry Street looking at life through a different set of eyes as we matured long before we were ready. Sins that we should not have witnessed or been part of became a daily experience, and few of us were strong enough to find a way to say no. Innocence became a fleeting prospect when most of life’s controls were temporarily missing. Was he a devil that preyed on us or a puppet master that held us by invisible strings only he could see? No, I believe that he was as much a part of the equation as he was of the solution. We did what we did because we wanted to and nobody was twisting our arm to do it.

Tommy and the Raiders were finally undone by something as simple as telling a little kid no. We got together one night and planned a raid on the warehouse that was owned by a local plumber where valuables such as tools and equipment that could easily be sold were kept. One of Joe’s little brothers had overheard the planning of the break-in and wanted to go. Tommy told Joe to take care of him and unfortunately for all of them, Joe had a nasty way of saying no. It wasn’t bad enough that he slapped his little brother Junior down, but on top of that he had to add, “You’re just a pinche pirujito, and if you say anything, I’m gonna beat your ass even more!”

Tommy didn’t let that minor interruption get in the way, and soon everybody was inside that warehouse with me on the outside as a lookout. We thought we were pretty cool as Tommy had conveniently found a set of walkie-talkies in Coach Harmon’s car the week before. I remember feeling like that guy from the television show, “The Man From Uncle,” as I crouched in the weeds by the alley where I could see all of the traffic as it passed by. “Everything A-ok,” I would say, as Tommy would call me nervously from inside the building. Soon, they came out loaded with as much stuff as they could carry, and we slowly made our way home through the mesquite filled lots that led to our home. It never occurred to me that we weren’t that far from our own neighborhood, or that we took everything straight to Tommy’s where he hid it in the junk filled room behind the kitchen at the back of the house.

The problem that came up was that Joe’s little brother was still mad and was just as crazy as any of them. Revenge was a drink that he thirsted for, and inevitably the opportunity to quench this thirst came in the face of the police making a door to door sweep of the neighborhood to see if anyone knew anything about the break-in. Junior waited patiently out on the front steps of their house until the cops had made it to his yard. As the detective walked up to where he sat, Junior looked up and said with a big smile on his face, “ I know who did it, you know. You know, breaking into that house over there.” As he said this he pointed in the direction of the break-in. “What did you say?” The detective was not used to having any help from anyone in this neighborhood and for some reason, he still doubted if this snot nosed Mexican kid was telling the truth.

“I said, I know who broke into that house with all those tools in it,” he repeated as if the cop was stupid or something. As he looked down on this kid, Detective Mark Davis realized that something was going on and he better pay attention. Taking out his little spiral notebook that he kept in his pocket, he asked. “Ok, lets just say you know who did this. Why should I believe you?” Ray looked up at him, smiled some more and explained that his brother Joe had called him a perujo and nobody was going to do that. Ray even told the police that he knew where the stuff was being kept and volunteered to show them. He promptly fingered his brother and Tommy for the crime and even led them to the alley from where he could point out Tommy’s house. It didn’t take the detectives long to obtain a search warrant for Tommy’s house, and it didn’t take them long to find all of the things that had been taken from the plumber. I remember seeing the cops hauling Tommie out of his house in handcuffs and then driving away with him in the back seat. For me all I could do was to wait at home in fear, waiting, knowing that I would be next in line to be picked up. But no, Junior was only pissed at his brother and Tommy, and luckily he didn’t give a shit about the rest of us.

Soon after, Tommy left for Springer, the reform school that he had once prophesized would be his next home. Joe was put on probation as this had been his first offense, however, he would soon join Tommy as Joe was one of those guys who lived on Mulberry Street that never seemed to learn from his, or anybody else’s mistakes. As for me, almost getting caught put the fear of God into me for a little while, but soon, according to one of my tia’s, I became my own version of Tommy. Maybe I was a little watered down, and didn’t have quite the intimate relationship with the juvenile probation officers or the judges, but my cousin Richie said to me one night when we were out drinking, “you know Miko, my tia Mine says you’re a bad influence and I need to stop hanging out with you.” I just laughed, handed him the bottle of Everclear we had just gotten for cutting the grass of the bootlegger who lived across the street and said,

“Whatever, Man!”