Cowboy

I saw a cowboy today.  Not one of those rootin' tootin' cowboys of my youth like Roy, Gene or Hopalong.  A real cowboy-looking cowboy.

You know the type, long and lean, a red shirt with a stitched yoke across the front and back and pearly buttons, and the pant legs down over plain western boots.  Clean shaven except for a thick, dark mustache that curled ever so slightly at the tips and a broad brimmed, well made straw hat.  He'd be the type of fellow I'd expect to see unlimbering from a dusty pickup in front of Brandi's Country Kitchen in Bridgeport, Texas.

Now you are starting to see him in your mind, aren't you.  You can see him taking those long strides up to the door of Brandi's place, opening it as if he'd been eating there for years and entering the dimly lit place beneath the Big Red sign.  Spying an empty table, he'd pull out a chair with a screech and, plopping his hat on  the chair next to him, sit and pick up a menu from the metal holder in the center of the table.

He'd study the menu and when the waitress comes up to the table, she'd call him honey, but you know she calls everybody honey.  It's that kind of restaurant.  He'd order two eggs, biscuits, chicken fried steak with gravy and black coffee.  You know he didn't need to read the menu, don't you.

A couple of fellows dressed similarly would come into the restaurant, see him and, uninvited, join him, taking off their hats as well.  They do that in small town Texas. They'd know the menu, too, and order without reading it.  The waitress would bring their coffee in big thick mugs, hot and black, but not necessarily real strong.  This is Bridgeport, Texas, not Paris, France.

When their orders come, they'd add salt and pepper from the little glass shakers in the metal holder where the menus are.  If you look, you'll see grains of rice in the salt shaker.   Most conversation at the table would stop as they dug into their breakfast.  At last one of them would cut up the eggs with a sawing action as he held them with his fork.  Perhaps one of them would sprinkle the plate liberally with sauce from the bottle of Texas Pete sitting in the rack with the salt, pepper and menus.

Got the idea?  Real cowboy-lookin' fellas.

I saw a cowboy today.  Not one of those rootin' tootin' cowboys of my youth like Roy, Gene or Hopalong.  A real cowboy-looking cowboy.

Somehow this cowboy-lookin'  fella looked out of place pushing his lawnmower through the thick lush grass that's grown so well this year because of the heavy rain that's fallen on his small town in north Georgia.