Riding the JK Brand

When I pulled into their yard tonight, Johnny and Cherri Knippling were canning corn. We sat at the dinner table and talked about their grandkids, and their great-grandkids, and of course horses. I shared my thoughts on the growing sport of mounted shooting, and my hopes for its future. The view out the window of their home was, as always, fantastic. The panoramic view of the prairie overlooking Elm Creek will always remain one of the awe- inspiring vistas in SD.

Eventually I followed Johnny out to a barn where he kept the weanling colt I bought from him. This stud colt means a lot to me, as it will be the last crop to come from his storied ranch. The wrinkles and the creaking joints gave way to a lifetime of wisdom as he shared secrets to coax the magic out of a colt.

We visited about days long gone when the white man first settled Buffalo County. How the Grassland looked then, and how people worked then compared to the way they do now. It surprised me to learn how the Reservation for a long time had no internal fences whatsoever. There were no washouts, and the creeks were passible with wagons, because the silt on the hillsides hadn’t found its way down into the drainage-ways.

“Did people ever get together to race horses out in pastures back-in-the-day?” I asked as Johnny laughed aloud.

“Where do you think the term, ‘at the drop of a hat’ came from?” He asked. It turns out folks in the county rode out to meet on Sundays to race their horses in the middle of anywhere. Somebody would drop a hat, and hooves would pound like thunder. The ancient trophy that is a fast horse lived well into the mid-20^th century on the plains, before progress took its toll. He told me about his days breeding race horses, and the days of producing ranch horses ever since.

As a chronic day-dreamer, my mind drifted to my awkward teenage years when I was judging horses in FFA. I found myself in hot water for missing the judging school before the State Convention. Embarrassed and unsure of myself, I went to see Johnnie. My advisor was steaming mad at me, and I was too ashamed of what happened to cause me to miss practice to tell my FFA advisor. Johnnie pulled out some dusty drawings of horses from an old chest and thudded them down in front of me. He explained proper confirmation and to never get suckered in by a pretty face. My first memory of real pride was winning that judging contest a few days later. Johnny probably changed my life, because FFA became a driving force in shaping who I am today.

This new stud colt is a buttermilk-colored dun with zebra stripes on his legs. He has the rump of a quarter horse and the breeding to win any pasture race in the country. If he turns out to be fast, his name will be “Smoke”, and if he turns out to have more cow talent then I will name him “Dusty”. He’s definitely “spookier” than most colts, which I’m excited about. Perhaps he still has some of that “race” blood in him?

 People think it’s silly to invest in a horse that won’t pay a dividend for such a long time, especially in this market. Well, this deal isn’t an investment, and it’s not about a market. It’s about the brotherhood of a dying breed. I am among the last of the wild bunch who ever attended that country school in Gann Valley. This colt is of the last crop of horses foaled on that ranch. We ate the same dust, we drank the same water, we watched the same sunsets and we felt the same wind in our face. We are kindred spirits destined to partner up on the journey we call life.

Johnny’s stories and memories deserve a better writer than myself, and the unique era in which he lives will become a forgotten chapter in time. Today’s kids have video games, Facebook, and cell phones that are smart. Farm-work means setting the A/B line on a GPS and calibrating a yield monitor. How people back then even found out where that week’s horse race was without text messaging escapes us all… or it soon will.

Some random things that happened to me last week that I didn’t think ever would

 

1) I never thought I would be racing down sidewalks in a large SD town with a pickup and horse trailer, passing a dozen cops in the process.

 2) I never thought I would find myself yelling at cops.

3) I never thought the cops I was yelling at would actually try to do what I asked them to do.

 4) I never thought I would watch a “cowboy” try to rope a calf with an extension cord while riding in the back of a pickup driving across people’s lawns.

Names will be spared to protect the guilty. I hauled some calves to a sale-barn, somewhere in the Northern Plains Region last week, and disaster struck. One of my calves escaped and ran across a town that we won’t mention. How did this happen you might ask? Ummm…. Suffice it to say that my cowboy abilities can use some polishing.

At first as I saw my largest calf escape out an impossibly narrow crevice, I stared in utter disbelief. There was simply no way this drama was unfolding before my eyes. Certainly it was just my over-active imagination running wild. But as nearby people began shouting and running I knew this wasn’t another vivid daydream. So I did the only smart thing I could do when I said, “Who’s calf is that anyway?” as I just drove away.

I wish that was true, but it’s not. Instead I jumped in my pickup and took chase. Over curbs, across lawns, through parking lots… the chase was on. I considered taking it easy, but just then over the radio came Kenny Loggins “Danger Zone” and a white-knuckled adrenaline rushed foot was pushed to the floor-board. After 20 minutes of terrorizing commuters in heavy traffic, the local police arrived to really mess things up. Their hearts were in the right place, but there vehicles were consistently at the wrong place at the wrong time.

The calf didn’t know what to make of this new asphalt jungle where sirens blared, lights flashed, and some guy with hand-cuffs jumped on it, trying to put it under arrest without reading it its Miranda Rights. Eventually somebody recognized the need for a cowboy, and alas, one was found. Only this cowboy didn’t own a rope, so an orange extension cord was provided. I’m not going into the comedic act, which is a man trying to lasso a calf from a pickup in the middle of a four-lane highway with an extension cord, but at some point during this insanity it occurred to me to have my name removed from my horse trailer.

Eventually, rationality struck the local law enforcement and the pursuit was called off and we let the calf roam free. Thankfully for me, he showed up the next night, right where he escaped from. A lot of lessons were learned that night, but for me the biggest was my acute lack of cowboy prowess. I’m not exactly sure what to do about it, except perhaps enter the Bareback-Bronc riding competition in the Wessington Springs rodeo? Ya, that’s it! That makes sense. Haven’t decided for sure yet, but it would complete my pretty much my otherwise impeccable record of doing really stupid things in public.

Shooting at Stuff is Cool….

I’m really excited about my latest passion! Shooting revolvers, lever-action rifles, and double-barrel shotguns off of a sprinting horse is great fun, and it has practical uses.

 Dakota Running irons is a local Cowboy Mounted Shooting club based out of the Ashley Arena near Pukwana. With any luck, the folks there won’t laugh at me too much should I fall off one of my broncs as I attempt to shoot stuff from the saddle. So far I’ve learned that anybody can shoot a gun off of pretty much any horse, it’s doing it again after the animal’s flight response kicks into overdrive that’s tough.

 I thought about getting into Team Penning, and still might, but the mounted shooting thing has so much more practical use. For example the US is now at war with yet another Muslim oil producing nation and it’s clear the days of the automobile are nearing an end. Ol’ Gaddafi might have been a tyrant, but at least he kept his tribes in line and the oil flowing. Why we are backing the random rebel groups is beyond me. Who knows what wacky plans they have once they’re in control? What makes us think those rebels won’t go to fighting with each other once “peace” breaks out?

In my opinion, the real reason that ordinary citizens in the Middle East want to overthrow their rulers has nothing to do with pursuing prosperity. What the rebels really long for are the old days when the different sects could saw each others heads off. Maybe the Sunnis face the wrong direction when they pray and that makes the Shiites mad? Maybe the Shiites don’t beat their women-folk enough, and that makes the Kurds mad? Nobody knows for sure why they are all out of their minds, but I have a suspicion it has a lot to do with the lack of branches on their family tree. What’s evident is that blowing up Muslims is high entertainment for the other Muslims, and having a mean dictator get in their way is ruining their fun. Besides, mean dictators in the Middle East are good for America, and lord knows the desert warlords and tribal chieftains can’t have that. Especially when America will partner with these jokers.

 So what we have going on now is that our arms built in here in the USA are destroying other arms built in the USA. We halt blasting them long enough to get another fill-up of their oil so we can then carry on the destruction. The entire thing is financed with our Chinese line-of-credit. Let me get this straight, we borrow money from the Chinese to buy oil from the Arabs which we burn as we blow up Arabs and their military equipment which we gave to them in the first place…..

 So… why the horses? Our country is not going to fix its roads much longer. The shocking lack of road-quality gravel in Eastern SD after a mere 50 years of use isn’t even an issue. We will run out of wealth before we run out of resources. It’s the natural outcome from our leaders eating paint chips and taking baths in mercury the moment they get to Washington D.C.

So… why the guns? We live in a society that PAYS thugs and gang-bangers to not riot excessively. It keeps them from bothering the rest of us too much. What happens when those welfare dollars lose their purchasing power not by the recent mere 20% per year, but by 100% overnight? Well… let me put it this way… we won’t need to worry about policing atrocities and mass catastrophe on the other side of the world… we’ll have plenty of it right at home.

How Guys Think…. (err at least how I think that we think)

 

Tales from the Outback

 

How Guys Think…. (err at least how I think that we think)

“My kids are doing this. My kids are doing that.” I hear all the time. Can raising kids really fulfill a man’s quest for destiny? Is this the final stop in the journey to “The Big Search”? As one who hasn’t been there, I can’t help but wonder…

I’ll try to tie that back in later in this narrative, but at this moment I’m pulled off on the side of I-90 at 4:43 AM at the approach of an old friend called Bigfoot Road, compelled to put thought to paper. What is it that pushes men to get up and do the things we do? What could possibly keep the sweatshop workers or the subsistence farmers from gouging out their eyeballs with a set of chop-sticks? How do they make it without that singular piece of light at the end of the tunnel we call hope?

I suspect it has to do with an individual’s age?? From the ages 18 to 32 we men remain locked in the quest for female conquest. The entire male experience, near as I can tell, during this period is rack up the “booty-count” whether we are conscious of it or not. Even us fellas largely unsuccessful in this endeavor remain complicit in the pursuit during this era in one’s life. Even if it’s garnering a flirtatious smile from the checkout clerk at the corner Gas-N-Grub, it’s the primal exploration for the next conquest that makes the day worth living.

Once a man reaches the age of 30 he goes through an awkward phase where the body rejects the original hunt and the mind replaces the original chase with a new one called “wealth accumulation”. Just like the “booty-count” it matters not whether the bank account actually grows or falls, its only the pursuit that matters.

At some point during this tail/money chasing endeavor, a man simply has to wonder if this is all life is about. Luckily, every now and then, true happiness is achieved when another creature actually bends over backwards for the sole reason to please you. This heart-melting moment might be when your golden lab obeys your command to not fetch until you want him to. For me it’s when a colt performs a rollback on the slightest cue. Not because you I make him, not because he’s robot-ically responding to repetition, but only because he wants to make you happy. 

It’s clear as a bell that true happiness must involve another living creature, and your mutual-bond to it. Everything else is just noise.

 

What Last Year’s Volcanoes Mean to this Year’s Crop

When the Lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a day’s wages, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!”

— Revelation 6:5-6

Now it’s not like me to quote the New Testament, but given what is likely to happen to the crop this coming year, I need to make an exception. What was the last really, and I mean REALLY bad crop year? Was it 1988? Nope. 1976? Wrong again. The “Dirty Thirties”? Not even close. The last time we had a crop SO tiny that it literally shook the very foundations of civilization itself was 1816…. And it’s about to happen again for the same reason.

Before I explain why we are about to experience epic an cataclysmic famine of biblical proportions, let me bring to light a few details on what happened in 1816 and why we are about to see the same thing. The year 1816 is referred to as “The Year Without a Summer”. Snow fall all year in the New England States, frost ruthlessly attacked the Southern States, and crops didn’t grow. The same thing happened all around the world.

People in Northern Europe abandoned their homes and walked south towards the Mediterranean, begging for food the whole way. Food riots broke out across Europe, and the only food riots to ever hit North America happened along the Eastern Seaboard. Switzerland lost scores of people to malnourishment, and people turned to lawlessness to fend for themselves.

Why did 1816 not have a summer? It was frigid in 1816 because a gigantic volcano blew ash into the air in April of 1815… the preceding year. When did that big volcano in Iceland stop air travel last year? April. To top it off, 2010 was one of the biggest years for volcanic activity ever recorded. From Iceland to Italy to Antarctica, to islands everywhere, 2010 saw volcanoes spewing ash into the stratosphere.

Do we have evidence that this year is starting out like 1816 did? Are ya kidding me? Last week leading up to the superbowl saw Dallas, TX locked in a winter wonderland that ND would be proud of. Bolivia… that’s right, BOLIVIA lost millions of tropical reptiles, fish, and birds to the never-seen-before arctic temps that struck it. Half of all the world’s butterflies died last week in the tropics thanks to the temperature plunge.

What is going to happen to ethanol production if the corn crop is an absolute failure? Nothing according to current law. Over 13 billion gallons of ethanol must get blended in 2011 to satisfy the mandate. This means that the ethanol industry gets the first four billion bushels of corn grown, and the livestock sector gets whatever is left. This is incredibly scary to people like myself who depend on the ethanol industry’s long-term viability.

I sincerely hope I’m wrong, but a person needs to do their own research on this subject.

Check out;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1815_eruption_of_Mount_Tambora

http://bigthink.com/ideas/26416

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100827/full/news.2010.437.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1353073/Winter-storm-Map-shows-Northern-Hemisphere-covered-snow-ice.html

How I Finally Became an NFL Fan

For decades I dodged the bullet of becoming a fan of an individual sports team. I watched my roommates in college hang their happiness on the performance of 22 guys they didn’t know and gathered immense pleasure when things went south for them. (I know, I’m a total jerk, still working on that) “How are you guys doing?” I’d ask after returning to SDSU after a weekend in Gann Valley. Dull stares in the other direction… “OK, so either your dog died or your team lost I guess.” I’d respond and go laughing about my way.

I wrongly thought that I understood why restaurants in a city whose team actually won conduct so much business that glorious week. I assumed it was because the average guy in the city really doesn’t have much else to get excited about. I mean, what does Joe Suburb really have to take his mind off of the daily grind if not for watching millionaires roll around on fake turf? But in the last few years, I’ve noticed that nearly all of my friends I dearly respect who farm and ranch are hardcore sports fans. Am I missing something? That’s where the dilemma first arose…. Do I automatically swear away sports fandom for life simply to remain independent and maintain my title of oddness? Or do I give it a chance just in case I’m missing out? That question haunted me for years.

Adding to the quandary of whether or not to test the waters of falling in love with a team is of course, which team will it be. The Broncos seem like the obvious choice because they’re the only team in the Mountain Time zone. Their drawback is their stadium is named “Invesco Field” after some corporate sponsor. Add to that there are way too many Californians and not enough farmers in Denver, and it takes them off the front burner. Any team on either coast is automatically out for obvious reasons.

The Vikings seem like a smart choice given their distance from SD, but then again I don’t like the State of MN. Nothing against Minnesotans, I’m just jealous because they get to take the summer off instead of harvest wheat and put up hay while their corn and beans grow.

I decided I needed to pick a team in a geographic area that knows what sacrifice is all about. That leaves out Pittsburg and Detroit because those cities are in bed with labor unions.

I honestly planned on delaying my team choice for at least several more years, but then something unexpected happened on the way to Lambeau field to watch the Packers/Vikings game last weekend. (The wife is a rabid NFL fan) Hillary and I drove down a small two-lane road somewhere in northern Wisconsin when we happened across a guy herding cattle. It’s not something I’m used to seeing a guy do on foot, so we stopped and talked to the gentleman. He told us all about his tiny farm, and how he moves his milk cows every day to the parlor. I asked him if he ever named any of them. “Yes.” was his simple answer “We name them.”

I wasn’t sure if I could believe this chap or not, so I pointed at one of the cows lumbering along and asked, “How ‘bout that one?”

“Nips.” Was his instant response.

“And that one?” I inquired pointing at another.

“Crooksie.” Came the immediate reply.

I eyed him and asked, “You mean to tell me you name each and every cow on the place?” The fella was a joy to talk to. While we stopped and chatted, the cows ambled on, knowing exactly where to go. It just seemed so unusual for a farmer in this day and age to nurture every inch of their property like that. In fact it flat-out blew me away. I immediately stopped assuming folks in the rest of the country have an easy life, and wondered if perhaps my world-view might be as narrow minded as my lovely wife always tells me.

I came away from the experience thinking about what an NFL team really stands for. It’s not just a bunch of super athletes dueling it out for the pursuit of that holiest of rings. It’s the little people who make it all possible. It’s the guy in the combine listening to the game on his XM satellite radio, the under appreciated housewife who’s only escape is that Sunday contest she looked forward to all week, and yes of course it’s the guy with the radio on in the milk barn, making his cows wonder why he is so excited for a change.

Here’s to hoping all of you sports fans can remain as happy on bad nights as you are on the good ones!

SD’s 2010 Crop Year in Review

It’s often said that there is no such thing as normal in SD, just an average of the extremes. Well, 2010 certainly didn’t test that theory. We started out bizarrely, and it just got more entertaining from there. Below are the top 10 things that come to mind about the 2010 SD crop year;

1) North/Central SD harvested more bushels of corn in June of 2010 than they did from 2002 through 2006 COMBINED. The big rains during 2009 created titanium corn stalks with Kevlar ear shanks that just held on with help from the BT trait until the combine was ready. Those fields were too wet to describe, after fall rains created a bog-hole of a swamp in every acre, if not an all-out lake. Somehow the yields off of those fields were nothing short of fantastic thankfully. The sunflowers growing in these fields in 2010 also enjoyed the extra moisture from the tassle-deep snow-catch.

2) The May 12 blizzard that shut down I-90 at Wall, SD was just plain wrong. After a record warm April, the Winter Wheat was ahead of normal, and the cold snap in May banged some of it up more than folks realized in certain areas. Many growers threw the groceries at their wheat, hoping for a repeat of the triple digit yields from the year before. Those monster yields did happen in some places along the Missouri River, but most areas were disappointed with yields in the 60 bushel range. Mellette, Todd, Shannon, and Bennett counties in South/Southwestern SD seemed most effected by the May temperature plunge.

For the most part, the early planted winter wheat did much batter. All but the earliest planted Spring Wheat was a big disappointment for most.

3) For the 2nd year in a row, the folks in western SD had FAR more rain than people in the Sioux Falls area received during May. In fact, flooding was a chronic problem west of the river all spring long, while the I-29 corridor didn’t start looking for an Ark until “Monsoon-June” hit with a vengeance.

It was next to impossible to get corn planted on time in Western SD, and I don’t know of a single soybean field planted timely west of the 100th meridian.

As it turns out, 2010 was yet another year since I lost count of when that the corn planted in the 3rd week of May outran any other planting date. Meanwhile soybeans planted after May 20 were penalized sharply at the scales, with more farmers vowing to plant them earlier next year at all costs.

4) April was a scary-dry month, and thank goodness for it. The only reason we got done what we did is due to no rain that month after the drenching fall and deep snow all winter.

5) The third week of May was a god-send. It was our one break west of Hwy 281 to get crops in the ground after twiddling our collective thumbs. The boys in the east were just finishing up as we battled mud. Don’t know how long before I see that one again, but I’m definitely not holding my breath…

6) I’m pretty sure it rained every day across the entire state the first three weeks in June. No light sprinkles either. I’m talking daily down-pours.

7) About four counties in North Central SD made the Big Guy upstairs mad the 3rd week of June, cuz he didn’t send another drop of rain their way until Sept. I’m utterly astonished, because that area is pulling off monster fall crops! 130 bu corn and 35 bu beans are common in Walworth/Potter counties, and for the life of me I don’t know how. Obviously management played a massive role in these magic yields, as did soil type, afterall they didn’t look pretty in the lighter soil types.

8) East-Central SD lacked something very important in our soil this year, and we crucified yields due to it. In many cases, this was the biggest disaster since 1988 due to this deficiency;

My soils professor at SDSU taught us the perfect soil has four things; 4% Organic Matter, 46% mineral, 25% water, and 25% air. Well, eastern SD fell deficient the “air” portion. Bigtime. The story of the year easily is the water-logged soils that hammered yields in the low-lying areas. Over 50% of the yields in many eastern counties are coming from 25% of the fields in the highest landscape position. Gravel knolls are out-yielding low-lands by a factor of 20 in the same field. In fact, nobody knew hilltops could yield so well.

Those deep, black, rich glacial till soils (that normally produce the most) literally smelled like manure all year. A perpetual muck, that couldn’t grow aerobic bacteria, sent every nitrate molecule into the sky, having been stripped of the Oxygen atom by some hungry anaerobe.

Roots refused to grow where they couldn’t breathe, and the poor corn in the bottom ground barely set ears. In fact, much of it got knee high twice; once on the way up, and once on the way back down.

9) Epic heat pushed the crops everywhere in the State along much faster than they are used to. The upside of the warmth is of course dry corn which is a joy to harvest, with the downside being lost mineralization in the soils that needed it most. Sure the organic matter mineralized in those eastern bottom-lands, but not as fast as a nitrogen-starving corn plant needed it. After all the rain-induced denitrification, the slow mineralization was simply too little, too late.

10) I will always remember 2010 as the year that I could look outside in the AM after a one-inch rain fell during the night and not tell whether or not it had even rained. It was THAT wet. Of course some of the bigger rains were noticed. Roads, damns, ditches, all underwater. Sanborn County went from pothole country, to lake country, and finally to island country. For awhile there I was afraid we would become ocean country.

Well, that was the growing season as I remember it. Currently we remain in the nicest Indian Summer I ever saw. Every day more perfect than the last. After last October’s horrific daily drizzle, the sight of frogs still playing under a blue sky full of happy birds makes me smile.

I hope you enjoy the rural renaissance underfoot as much as I do. With resource constraints plaguing commodity production across the globe, the tiny villages in SD we call home are booming for the first time since WWI. Some of us predicted this five years ago when resource constraints began nipping at the heels of the old Starbucks Economy, but for some reason these jokers below are still trying to understand what is behind this colossal human migration -

http://www.argusleader.com/article/2…ns-to-S-D-gain

How to Solve the Drug Problem

Have I ever smoked dope? Why in the world would I want to? I don’t ever want to become mellow, or relaxed, or laid-back, or even tranquil. I don’t even like hanging out with relaxed and spaced-out people. I want all my friends on the edge with veins popping out of their arms, ready to dominate the world, or at least charge hell with a bucket of water. The only drug I’ll ever crave for is caffeine and a six-pack of Busch Light. That’s just my personal preference, but I’m a live-and-let-live kind of guy, so to each their own.
 
I can’t even process the controversy about Medical Marijuana. How is this even on the ballot? If some doctor prescribes a drug, then by definition, it’s either dangerous, addictive, or both. Pretty much the only thing in a pharmacy that isn’t a threat to people is contraceptives, and come to think of it… I suppose even they are a threat to potential people. I mean, it’s not like Vicodin is something you want teenagers popping ad hoc, which is why it’s only available by prescription. Why sould cannabis pills be any different?
 
If Cannabis treats Glaucoma, then why is the voting public even discussing it? Why doesn’t the medical community weigh the drug’s pros and cons the way they do every other substance and either use it or lose it? What if it we had to go to the ballot box every time a new drug was invented? Is this the process we want to choose to approve every medical treatment?
 
I’ll tell you what I think makes sense to put on the ballot; an up or down vote on all-out legalization of drugs… period. Nothing would make me happier than to see the inner-city thugs bankrupted. Instead of cruising around in Cadillac’s and Escalade’s with chrome rims and thumping music, the gang-bangers might actually be forced to get a frickin’ job for once. I’m also sick-and-tired of supporting a bloated prison population. “The Land of the Free” has the highest per-capita prison population on the planet thanks to our failed, “War on Drugs”.
 
The people I know who smoke dope are all losers, and will probably all remain losers forever. You can’t outlaw stupidity. The demand for products to fry the human brain will always be there, so the only question is who makes money from the sale of the “grease” to do the frying.
 
Conversely, you can dump truck loads of drugs on the lawns of the folks who don’t smoke dope, and they still won’t take a puff. The people who don’t do drugs don’t for one reason and one reason only… they don’t want to. It sure as the world isn’t because they aren’t readily available. Prohibition didn’t work in the 1920’s, and it doesn’t work now.
 
If you think that making something illegal will deter its use, then you believe the government can successfully regulate human behavior. I’m of the opinion the government can NOT successfully do anything, so I prefer the market assumes that role.
 
We all know pot-heads. Most folks think these people can become productive citizens if the rest of us spend enough tax money rehabilitating them, chasing around Mexican drug-lords, and enriching street-thugs. Not me. My way to cure these people is the “Darwinian Method”. Let these folks buy all the dope they can smoke from legitimate businessmen, and then allow them to remove themselves from the gene pool.
 
If we want to control crime, we need to quit spending $50,000/head/year locking people in the golf resorts we call prisons, and start spending $50 on locking them up in stocks on the courthouse lawns. It’s important for kids to watch as people throw gourds and melons and rotten eggs at the prisoners.
 
“Is everybody that does drugs a bad person?” I assume so, but then I’m hardly an expert, and at the end of the day, that question misses the point. The real question is, “What is the proper role of government”? Does a free society tell other people what to eat, what to drink, when to go to bed, and what to wear? Am I going too far with that last question? Consider that the USA is the only non-Muslim country in the world that doesn’t allow 18-year-olds to drink. If we judged ourselves with the company we keep in that regard, then I say it’s high time we changed our counter-productive ways and gave freedom a try.

Black Hills Cattle Roundup

Woohoo! It’s gonna be a stellar weekend for this hombre! Some great friends and I will load up three of my favorite’s ranch horses and head out to Hill City area to roundup cattle off 15,000 acres of Black Hills National Forest land.

Darin Schmiedt and I will bring our wives to a remote cabin out in the woods. There they will stoke the fire, butcher the day’s kill, and prepare meals for us while we adventure out into the great outdoors. I have no doubt these official “camp concubines” will fight off every urge to head into Rapid for golfing and shopping mischief while attending to the needs of the men.

Darin and I will carry on our saddles ropes, bull whips, guns, whiskey, and beer. Two of the horses I selected for this trip are seasoned cow-chasing veterans, and the one I will ride is a seasoned bronc, that freaks out over every little thing.

My secret hope is to convince my wife to abandon the cabin and join me outside to sleep under the stars on bedrolls near the horses. It’ll be a bit chilly, and they’re calling for snow, but a woman should view this as an opportunity to prepare for such conditions… just in case the need would ever arise.

Getting a huge calamity out of the way last week remains one of the reasons I’m most excited about the escapade. I’m now fully aware that trying to swim through fast rushing water that’s 20 feet deep doesn’t work with horses. As my small band of warriors marauded the Jim River breaks, I felt the Big Jim beckoning me. “Come over here young man.” It said to me. “All great horseman swim across me.” It added. “You are a big wuss if you don’t do it.” The world’s longest un-navigable river then chanted. 

What was I to do? Back down? Ya right. I did what anybody exposed to too many western movies would do, I threw a leg over Jack, my 16 hand-high, nine-year-old super gelding, and charged hell with a bucket of water. Err… in this case I more accurately charged water with a bucket of hell. All was well at first. We happily made it out to wither deep levels and we just skipped right along without missing a beat. Then disaster struck as we fell off the edge of the original bank and into the deep, murky river channel itself. I leaped out of the saddle the instant we both went under to prevent drowning my best friend. He came up bewildered, wondering why he ever listened to me in the first place. I could hear the Big Jim laughing as it swept rapids over fallen trees.

At this point ol’ Jack had enough of aquatic life and decided to turn around. I reluctantly went along with that line of thinking, so we both went to swimming back to the beach. But then a funny thing happened, I discovered that cowboy boots aren’t made for swimming. Now Mr. Jim River is chortling so hard he’s barely able to contain himself. So to spite the cackling creek, I did my patented thrash-n-splash maneuver as the current swept us downstream. Just as I was about to get harpooned by a protruding tree branch, I caught sight of mighty Jack off to my right. I reached out and grabbed the end of the life line that was his beautiful black tail. The great beast pulled me like a baby out of the channel and into shallow waters before stopping for a break.

Despite all my degrees and all my book studying, the old “School of Hard-Knocks” is the only place I ever learned a thing. The “Hard-Knocks School” will be in session this weekend as we gather critters out of the canyons of the Black Hills. If I make it back I’ll be far smarter. If I don’t, well… Darin will have some great stories to tell!

Mexican Oil Calamity

In my humble opinion, the Southern half of the USA is gonna get bit hard by the greatest perma-calamity to hit America since its inception. It all has to do with a new disease crippling Mexico.

What is this ailment striking Mexico? First let’s look at the symptoms… A couple weeks ago drug lords bombed a night club in Can Cun. A few months ago authorities found the grisly remains from 72 bodies near the Texas border, victims of drug gangs. Last August the American federal government posted signs 100 miles north of the Mexican border in Arizona warning travelers to restrict travel in that region due to insurmountable epic crime. Local county sheriffs along the border claim that drug lords have seized wide swaths of the State and control it with an iron fist.

So is the problem drugs? Of course not, there is a demand for dope so there will always be a supply. There were drugs decades ago yet the Mexican government didn’t let the suppliers completely and totally run the country until the last two or three years. So what changed so suddenly?

What changed is the Mexican treasury dried up faster than almost any other jurisdiction on the planet in the past three years. They simply can’t bid the wages of their police force up enough to fend off the lucrative offers from the drug cartels. How did the Mexican government get so much poorer so much faster than other countries did?

This fascinating story started in the 1976 by a fisherman named Cantarell. Every time this fisherman drug his nets across a particular spot in the Gulf of Mexico, the nets brought up tar. It didn’t take long for Pemex, the Mexican government-owned oil monopoly to capitalize on what turned out to be the world’s last Elephant oil field ever discovered.

The Mexican treasury gets two-thirds of its revenue from the sale of oil exports. They should be flush with cash right? Afterall, oil is four times more expensive today than it was from 1980 through 2004. So what gives?

The reason the Mexican government doesn’t have the coin to protect its citizens lies in its collapsing oil production. Cantarell is dieing fast, and the government is so strapped for cash in its attempt to sustain the welfare state that it doesn’t invest in drilling. To make a calamity into a full-fledged train-wreck of epic proportions, the Mexican people continue to consume more and more of their own oil. This means their oil exports are falling twice as fast as production falls.

Within three years Mexico will become forced to import oil, meaning 66% of its government income will evaporate. The drug lords will have all the money they need to completely turn their country into a death-zone.

This cauldron of destruction is certain to head north like a prairie fire, consuming everyone in its path.

Our best hope in good ol’ SD is bitter cold winters and our local population’s ability to utilize draconian enforcement of illegal immigration.